Proper Watering Techniques for Garden Plants

The Best Way to Water Your Garden

With all the hot weather we have been dealing with our plants need more water than with typical warm weather. Because of the extended heat, plants will become stressed, much like we do when we are in the heat for too long. *Remember to water early morning or in the evening, after the strongest heat of the day.*

Plants that are newly planted require more consistency in watering. It takes about 3 years for perennials and most shrubs to get to their mature size. It takes trees, depending on the species many years. During the initial year(s), the plant is putting a lot of energy into root formation. In order to remain healthy and flourish, they need to be getting adequate water down to the roots. Evergreens require watering until the ground freezes. 

Use the following best practices for watering in a variety of conditions to keep your plants healthy:

One of the most commonly asked questions, especially during a time of hot temperatures and infrequent rains, is how long and how often should I water my plants? Unfortunately, there is not one simple answer to this question. The correct answer is that it depends on a number of things and will vary depending on them. The one constant is that you want the soil to remain somewhat moist, like a damp paper towel, not crumbly dry and not dripping wet. When watering, you want the plants to receive enough water to replenish the moisture throughout the plant into the root zone. Your answers to the questions below will help determine what constitutes proper watering in your unique situation.

• Are the plants in the sun or the shade? If in the sun, is it morning sun or midday and afternoon sun?
• Are the plants receiving reflected light and heat from structures, rock mulch, and paved surfaces?
• What type of soil are they planted in - poor draining clay, fast draining sand, loamy, highly organic soil?
• What type of watering systems are you using – in-ground irrigation set for the lawn; in-ground irrigation with appropriate heads for watering shrubs and perennials and on a separate zone from the lawn; overhead, oscillating sprinklers hooked to a hose; soaker or drip hoses; hand watering?
• What type of plants – perennials, trees or shrubs, deciduous or evergreen?
• When were they planted (this year, many years ago)?
• Do you have mulch down? What type – bark, pine needles, rock, straw, compost?

Over watering can lead to mold and may make a plant more susceptible to disease.

The same plant in different conditions will require different watering practices. You must tailor your watering to the conditions AND the plant. Obviously, a location that receives afternoon sun and wind (west side) will dry out faster than something that only receives morning sun or no sun. Clay soil holds onto moisture and drains slowly. Sandy soils drain quickly and do not hold onto moisture. Loamy soils have a high concentration of organic material in them, drain appropriately and stay moist longer. If you are uncertain the type of soil you have, dig a hole and fill it with water. If the water does not stay in the hole at all but drains almost as quickly as you fill it, you have sandy soil. If the water stands for a long time in the hole, taking hours to over a day to drain, you have clay soil. Amending clay or sandy soil annually with organic materials such as compost, peat moss, topsoil will help add nutrients as well as change its composition, over time, so it drains more appropriately. Simply amending the hole you plant in does not make a significant enough change to dramatically affect watering technique.

The best way to determine when to water is by checking a few of the plants in each type of condition. Push the mulch away from the base of the plant and dig down a few inches with a trowel. If the soil is crumbly, you need to water. If it is squishy no need to water for awhile. If it is lightly moist, check again in a day or two. Another method is to push a piece of bamboo into the rootball. If it comes out dry then you need to water. If it comes out sopped and dripping then its too wet and needs to dry out. If it comes out moist then check in a day or two. You will find you need to water some areas more frequently than other areas – as stated above, there is no “one answer fits all conditions” in terms of watering. Keep in mind too that if you have clay soil, even if the soil near the top of the plant feels dry, the base of the plant may be very wet. It would really help to test how quickly things drain in your yard and utilize that to help you determine the optimal watering schedule.

Plants benefit most from slow, deep watering. This is most effectively achieved via soaker hoses or drip irrigation. Overhead watering is less effective, can promote disease and fungal problems and wastes water. On hot, windy days, you can lose over 50% of the water due to evaporation and runoff before it even gets to your plants. In ground irrigation systems that are set to water your lawn are not appropriate to water most perennials, shrubs and trees. The perennials usually get too much water, and the shrubs and trees usually do not get enough. You run into similar problems with hand watering. You are very likely not giving the trees and shrubs enough water. If your only option is to water by hand, for trees and shrubs it is better to just place a hose at the base of the plant and turn the water down to a trickle, then leave it on each plant for 15-30 minute (depending on the type of soil you have). That will allow the water to fully saturate the plant’s roots. If you are using soaker hoses or a drip system, the type of soil you have will also be important in determining how long to leave them on. If you have well draining soils, several hours is okay; for poorly draining soils 1 hour. If you are using overhead sprinklers, put them on for a set length of time (30 minutes or 1 hour) and check a few plants to determine how deeply watered they are. Use this to set up an appropriate schedule.

There are also a number of other items available to help with watering. Treegators can be a tremendous ally. Fastened around a tree and filled with water, they offer slow drip irrigation for the tree or plant without having hoses stretched out across the lawn.

Mulching your plants with bark, straws, compost products will help retain moisture and thus reduce the amount of watering you will need to do.


After your perennials have gone dormant and the leaves have dropped off your deciduous trees and shrubs, you will still need to water evergreens. If you have an in-ground system, have a plan in place to get water to your evergreens once the system has been shut off. Because evergreens have needles, they lose moisture through them during the winter. If they do not have an adequate store of water going into the winter, come spring, they will be dead.

Source: http://www.gertens.com/learn/Shrubs-Vines/proper-watering.htm

10 Beginning Gardener Mistakes to Avoid

Gardening Mistake No. 1: Starting Out Too Big
It’s difficult to resist those tempting photos of perfectly ripe vegetables and fruits in seed and nursery catalogs. It’s all too easy to order more vegetable varieties than your garden space and time will permit. Planting too large a garden is a mistake that can place too heavy a workload on a gardener and lead to frustration and burnout.

A better gardening strategy is to start small in the first year and plant only a few of your favorite veggies. This will allow you more gardening success and a greater feeling of accomplishment. In succeeding years, as practice builds your gardening skills, you can increase the size of your garden each planting season.

Gardening Mistake No. 2: Not Properly Preparing the Soil
Without good soil, no vegetable garden can thrive. Any preparation that the soil needs must be done before planting. Once those seeds begin to establish a root system, the soil cannot be disturbed without endangering the tender, young plants.

Prepare the soil as early in spring as you can work it without creating mud pies. Let the soil rest until the weather is warm enough to sprout seeds and support the growth of young plants. Then you can plant your vegetable garden and watch it spring to life.

Gardening Mistake No. 3: Ignoring Light Requirements
Vegetable plants need sunlight to grow properly and process soil and water nutrients. When choosing your garden spot, make sure that the area gets enough sun to grow the plants you want to put there. Some plants require more sun than others, and those light requirements must be honored when planting your garden.

Check planting recommendations on seed packets before you decide where to plant each seed variety. Some plants need full sun; other plants do well in partial shade. The directions on seed packets will tell you. Plan your vegetable garden before you plant, giving full-sun spots to veggies with the greatest sunlight requirements.

Gardening Mistake No. 4: Over- or Underfertilizing
Too much, too little or the wrong type or timing of fertilizer will not allow your garden plants to produce healthy, vigorous growth. For example, all plants require nitrogen, and high-nitrogen fertilizer will produce vigorous top growth—which is what you want for leafy green vegetables like chard, cabbage and lettuce. That same amount of nitrogen, however, will create such vigorous top growth that it can hold back ripening.

Excess nitrogen can have a similar effect on root vegetables. Robert Thomas of Tonasket, Wash., warns enthusiastic new gardeners: "Please, go easy on that wonderfully rich manure and homemade compost where you are going to plant your potatoes.” Manure and compost are such rich sources of nitrogen that putting too much on a potato patch can cause excessive top growth and delay the development of the edible tubers.

Gardening Mistake No. 5: Over- or Underwatering
Plants need water to metabolize nutrients and grow, but different types of vegetable plants need different amounts of water. Too little water will cause plants to dry up and wilt. Once seriously wilted, most plants will not recover, even if watered, so do your best to keep your vegetable plants from wilting. Too much water can rot the root system, and only healthy roots can absorb nutrients from the soil and hold the plant upright. Once rot afflicts the root system, the plant is done for.

Most vegetable plants prefer a good, deep watering one to three times each week. If you water too shallowly, the roots will grow near the surface instead of downward to seek water.

"If you don’t water your vegetable garden deeply and thoroughly, you might end up with shallow roots that cannot tolerate any drought at all," warns Rebekah James Pless of Spencer, N.C.

When you water your vegetable garden, ensure that the roots receive moisture. If you don’t know whether you’re watering deeply enough, check soil moisture by inserting the probe of a moisture gauge to the depth of the plant’s roots.

Gardening Mistake No. 7: Planting Bulbs Upside-down

Onions, garlic and other bulbs have a root-growing end and a stem-growing end. Make sure that you know which is which before you plant these seeds.

Planting bulbs wrong-end up will cause delayed growth as the root and top try to find the right direction to grow. This can use so much of the energy stored in the bulb that by the time the sprout reaches sunlight, the plant is weak and will fail to thrive. In most cases, the top of a bulb comes to more of a point than the bottom, so it’s not too difficult to tell which end should be up when planting.

Gardening Mistake No 8: Planting Too Closely—and Not Thinning
If you plant your seeds or transplants too closely, you’ll create too much competition for the nutrients in sunlight, soil and water. Seed packet instructions include advice on plant spacing, but it’s tempting to ignore it because seeds seem so tiny when you’re planting a patch of bare soil. It’s difficult to imagine how much space the plants that sprout from those seeds will need once they start to grow.

Not every seed planted will germinate and not every sprout will survive, so it’s OK to plant seeds closer than the spacing needed by mature vegetable plants. It’s important to thin the patch or row when plants are a few inches tall, removing enough of the seedlings to make room for the remaining plants to grow. Many vegetable plant thinnings are edible — young carrots and greens are tender and delicious—so enjoy your thinnings in an early-spring salad. Vegetable plant thinnings also can be left on the soil around remaining plants to serve as light mulch.

Gardening Mistake No. 9: Letting Weeds Grow Too Large
The best time to pull a weed is when it’s tiny and its root system is small. Pulling weeds at that stage of growth won’t disrupt the roots of your vegetable plants.

The longer you let a weed grow, the stronger a root system it will develop and the more nutrients it will steal from your vegetable plants. Keep weed growth to a minimum by mulching soil around your vegetable plants or disturbing the surface of the soil by regularly hoeing between your plants.

Gardening Mistake No. 10: Overmulching 
Mulch is a good thing, but too much of a good thing usually isn’t. Mulching with organic matter—like straw, dry leaves or grass clippings—helps keep weeds from sprouting, retains moisture in the soil, keeps the root zone cool and provides nutrients for the plants as the mulch decays.

A light mulch is fine after planting, but don’t mulch too deeply or seed sprouts might not be able to push through into the sunlight. To retain soil moisture and discourage weeds, gently add more mulch as the plants grow. After mulching, draw the mulch back 1 inch or so from the stems of the young plants so it doesn’t create too much heat as it decomposes or trap dampness against the stem and cause rot.

Take special care when using green mulches like fresh grass clippings, as these materials produce heat while decomposing, which can harm the plant and even kill it. Green mulches are very rich in nitrogen, which they release as they decompose. This nitrogen boost will fuel top growth in vegetable plants, which you might not desire.

Don’t use grass hay as mulch. It often contains seeds of weeds that can spread rapidly and become very difficult to remove once they’ve established themselves in a vegetable garden. Wheat straw contains fewer weed seeds, so it is usually a safer mulch than hay.

A lot of gardening questions become common sense to a gardener after a few seasons of experience. There’s a lot to learn along the way, but you will learn how to avoid a bunch of common gardening mistakes.

Source: http://www.hobbyfarms.com/crops-and-gardening/10-beginner-gardening-mistakes-to-avoid.aspx