Summer has arrived at last (though we have been waiting three years for it).
Why be stuck inside or waste time staying connected on your iGadgets when you could be relaxing and topping up your Vitamin D?
So this week’s blog is mercifully short and simple. I’m going to look at water… or more specifically watering.
When even your docks droop in the midday sun (despite their long taproots), it’s tempting to head straight for the watering can or sprinkler hose and spritz up your garden. And let’s face it, it’s rare for us to suffer a hosepipe ban in this part of the world, so why not?
Except, even if water conservation isn’t your primary concern, there are much better ways of watering than little and often.
In some ways, the most important watering you will ever do is ‘watering in’ your plant when it’s first planted. Whether it’s a wee seedling, a bare rooted fruit bush or tree, or it came in a pot, the rules are simple. If it’s in a pot, give the soil a good soaking before you transplant. After transplanting, give the ground around the plant an even better soaking! This reduces transplant shock (meaning the plant should keep growing away without wilting or protesting in some other way) and gives a generous buffer zone from which the plant can draw the moisture it needs. In doing so, its roots grow out into the surrounding soil, anchoring it better and making it more resilient in the case of high winds or zero rainfall. Watering in also settles the soil around your tender new planting – making sure there are no big spaces without soil which could destabilise the plant and make it more than a little unhappy.
Once your plants are in place, if the Scottish weather isn’t doing it for you, it’s tempting to keep the sprinkler to hand to see your plants through the blistering heat of a Scottish summer like this one. But you won’t necessarily be doing your plants any favours. My Grandfather, who (along with Adam the Gardener) is my gardening guru, always used to tell me to hold my nerve when it came to watering. If you water little and often, you are only really getting the top of the soil wet – and in warm weather a lot of that evaporates quickly anyway. This encourages the plant root’s to grow upwards into the top layer of soil, making it less stable and ever more dependent on your daily watering.
Much better to wait until you get the very slightest hint of droop and then give the soil a thorough soaking – drench, don’t sprinkle! This makes sure the full depth of the soil gets wet and there is moisture available at the bottom of the plants root system, so its roots grow down into the earth and tap into all those minerals still available at lower levels, making your crops more nutritious, your plants more robust and much less needy and dependant. If you water smart and don’t get out your hose in the midday sun (you’ll lose some, if not most, of your effort to evaporation) and water in the early morning or late afternoon/early evening, your plants will thank you for it.
Better still, if you’ve prepared your growing beds using deep soil cultivation and adding lots of well matured compost to increase the humus in the soil, your wonderfully aerated bed will act like a sponge, hanging on to the water for longer – a sort of natural version of capillary matting.
Have fun in your gardens this week!
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