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Index : Watering
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- 21. Water Now Critical for Gardens & Trees - Top
If water wasn't critical before it certainly is now! With the scorching temperatures of the past two weeks, plants are parched! Even if you think your watering enough, your probably not. Temperatures of 100 plus, intense sun and single digit humidity literally suck the moisture out of plants.
Garden plants are the first to show signs of suffering. Wilted and scorched leaves develop rapidly. As these leaves shrivel and drop off, the shading they provided to flowers and fruit is lost, causing even more damage. Providing shade to flowers and vegetables, through this intense period of heat is the best way to protect them from further scorching. Shade cloth can be purchased at the garden stores, or you can cover plants with old sheets, the ones that are sort of thin and light colored. Allow some gaps around the edges to allow air to circulate under the sheets.
Watering of garden plants should be twice daily when temperatures are in the upper 90's and higher. These should be thorough soakings so that the entire garden bed is watered to a depth of 18 inches. If you have your garden on an automatic system, let it run long enough to be sure the plants have been provided a thorough soaking. To slow down the evaporation of water from the soil, I can't stress enough the importance of covering the soil with a 3 inch thick layer of organic mulch. Leaves, straw, compost, shredded bark, and small chunk bark are all good mulch materials. Cover the entire bed, not just around the base of plants.
Potted plants will also need twice-daily watering, once in the early morning and again in the early evening. If you are hand watering, make sure you run all the hot water out of the hose before tuning it on plants. Evening watering helps plants recover from partial wilting during the day. You can also move plants to shady spots to help them through the remainder of the month.
If you must be gone, even for a day, you will need to have a friend or neighbor water your potted plants, or you can install a simple automatic watering system.
A battery-operated controller can be attached to a hose bib and programmed to water your plants automatically. Choose a hose bib close to your potted patio plants. Screw the battery operated water controller on to the hose bib. Next, screw a 20 or 25 lb. pressure reducer on to the controller. This is needed to reduce the high pressure water coming from the hose bib to a lower pressure for low flow irrigation lines.
Your now ready to attach a one-half inch poly irrigation tub to the pressure reducer using a compression coupler. The coupler has a threaded end, and an open end. The threaded end is screwed on the pressure reducer. The one-half inch poly tube is then pushed into the open end.
The poly tube should extended to your potted plants. For temporary watering, group plants together in a location which receives full or afternoon shade. Lay the poly tube out on the ground and place an end cap on the end of the tube. Now you can use a hole punch device and connector barbs to puncture the poly tubing and connect small one-quarter inch drip tubing to your main line. The small tubing will then be run to the tops of each pot.
Finally, on the end of each one-quarter inch tube connect a drip emitter, spray stake, or section of soaker tubing to supply the water to your plants. I prefer spray stakes or soaker tubing because they distribute water over the pot more evenly than drip emitters.
Battery operated water controllers and other system components are available at most hardware and home supply stores. Choose a controller that allows you to water twice daily and for as short a duration as one minute. Spray stakes and soaker hose will need to operate from 2 to 8 minutes depending on the size of the container
For temporary systems, where the one half inch poly line is above ground, water in the early morning and late evening, when the water in the tubing is cool.
In addition to providing extra water for gardens, trees should also have additional water. Unlike small potted and garden plants, trees in the landscape are slow to show the effects of drought, and when they do, it's often too late to save them.
It is extremely important to water large trees. Slow, deep watering is best provided by using a soaker hose coiled around the tree. Start two to three feet from the trunk, and spiral the hose out maintaining a three foot spacing between the circling hose. Extend the hose out to at least the edge of the branches, farther if you can. On large trees, you may have to water the roots a section at a time.
Turn the soaker hose on low. The water should drip, not spray out. Leave it on several hours then check how deep the water has penetrated. The water should wet the soil to a depth of 2 or 3 feet. This will provide a large reservoir of moisture the tree roots can draw from. In extremely heavy soils it may take watering for the better part of a day for the water to penetrate deeply enough.
With the extended drought, A thorough watering of trees now, could be critical to their survival. If the relief of our Summer monsoon is late in coming, additional watering will be needed.
Written by John Begeman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Arizona, 520-626-5161 - Updated: June 9, 2002
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