It can be discouraging. The other day I heard on the TV that my area is in a drought. So maybe it is official. It's been months without any meaningful rainfall here. My main garden, without running water, is a disaster. I have been trying to manually water the plants, but I cannot keep up with the demand.
Having said that, I do have a few success stories that keep me going. I started building some hügelkultur raised beds a few years ago. In past years, they were OK, but I don't think I saw any great improvement over my regular raised bed. This year, however, with no rainfall to speak of, my hügelkultur raised beds are producing like crazy. I think this is because they have better water holding capability with all the wood product in the base layer that acts like a sponge. What water I have been able to manually give to my plants is getting soaked up in that wood. My regular raised beds are all dried out and nothing is growing well. The hügelkultur raised beds are thriving.
My other success story is my elevated 2X4 foot sub irrigated planters. They have the bottom 3 inches filled with water that soaks up and feeds the plants as needed. I have a water level indicator in the fill tube that lets me know when I need to refill the reservoir. For the past 2-3 years with normal rainfall, I only maybe had to refill my sub irrigated planters once a month. This year, a drought year, I am refilling the planters about twice a week. But while the grass lawn is a dead brown, and nothing wants to grow out in the main garden because it is so dry, my elevated sub irrigated plants are full of lush green bean plants and we are harvesting beans every few days.
So yeah, if I only had my "normal" garden with raised beds, I would be completely discouraged this year. I am very glad I started experimenting with other growing options because this year it has made it clear to me that some methods of growing plants can still work even in drought conditions.