HELP! Eremurus - Afghanistan crops
Diane Whitehead (Sat, 25 Jan 2003 22:58:15 PST)

In the 1970s dried fruit made up about half of Afghanistan's exports.
Apples, grapes and pomegranates were grown under irrigation, just
like California's crops. (I was amazed at how much of the Colorado
River has to be diverted to water Indio's date palms). Bombing has
destroyed the irrigation canals, and there have been several years of
drought.

Opium poppies are a hardy annual which begin growing in the fall.
I'm not sure how that works. Maybe it's like fall-sown wheat on the
prairies - it grows a bit and then gets covered with snow, I think. I
wonder if drought also means no snow?

I think a lot of bulbs survive cultivation because they grow deeper
than the farmers plow, though I wonder how seedlings cope. Maybe
they grow deep fast.

Diane Whitehead