Gardening with Peter Bowden: Wise watering

This has been a very hot summer and  there’s a tendency to overwater potted plants and hanging baskets during hot weather.  We overcompensate when it is hot and end up watering too much and drowning our container plants.  Always feel the soil before you water…if the soil is already moist, wait until later and check again.  

As simple as watering seems, there is a right and wrong way to go about it.  When you water, you should never spray the plants leaves with water.  Why all this fuss about keeping water off the leaves? 

1.  Spraying chills the leaves, shocking the plant. On a hot day we might think that our tomato plants would enjoy a cooling spray from the hose.  Actually, tomatoes love their leaves to be hot…they are from Central America after all.  On a 90° summer day, the leaves of the tomato are evaporating moisture.  The tomato (or any of our garden plants) replaces that moisture by drawing it up through its roots. Along with that moisture comes the nutrients the plant needs to grow, flower and produce fruit. When the leaves get hit with that 50°F water from the hose, it shocks the plant and it takes a couple of days to recover from that.  Every time you chill your tomato by spraying it with water, you’re cheating yourself out of a couple of days of growing. Our season is short enough without shooting our efforts in the foot by spray watering.

2.  Spraying our plants with water creates a perfect environment for fungal diseases to incubate and thrive. Folks are always worried about late blight, powdery mildew and a host of other diseases. But they’ll continue to water their vegetable garden with a lawn sprinkler. Plants with dry leaves are always going to be healthier.

3.  Spraying our plants with water washes the pollen out of the flowers.  Once that happens, the plant will abort that now-useless flower.  In the case of flowering ornamental plants, this means that a flower that could have lasted several days will now turn to mush by the next morning.  

In the vegetable garden, spraying the pollen out of the flowers means that no fruit will form until a new flower opens and gets pollinated.  All the effort we put into our vegetable gardens is undermined when we water with a lawn sprinkler.  

4.  Spray watering wastes water.  Plants absorb water through their roots and that is where the water should be directed.  Water sprayed on your garden damages the plants and most of it never gets taken up by the roots but instead evaporates into the air, doing little good for your plants and a great deal of damage to your garden.  

So, how do we water the gardens without wetting the plants? There are a couple of easy ways.

Use a watering wand.  A watering wand allows you to direct the water to the soil at the base of each plant so the roots can be soaked without wetting the foliage.  The wand gets the water where it’s most needed without wasting any.  Sometimes you want to give a deep drink to a larger plant like a shrub or tree…especially recently planted ones.  To do this, just turn down the volume on the wand and let it dribble slowly at the base of the plant.  This works well if you’re out putzing in the yard so you can move it around once in a while. A good soaking always beats a quick spray.

If you haven’t the time or patience for wand watering, you can use oozing soaker hoses so all you have to do is hook up your hose and walk away.  If you are using several soaker hoses in different beds, you may want to invest in snap connectors and an inexpensive water timer/shut off so you can let it run while you leave for work. 

Watering is actually quite easy. What seems to be hard for folks is breaking the spray-watering habit.  Remember, the lawn sprinkler is great for the lawn but has no business in the flowerbed or vegetable garden. That is the exclusive territory of watering wands and soaker hoses.

Thanks for the read!