How Often Should I Water My Garden?

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to watering plants. However, certainly knowing how much and when to water them is important given the many other factors involved. To maintain the health and beauty of your plants, knowing the right amount of water they require is essential.

The reason to have this specific knowledge is that plants are extremely sensitive to growth elements like water, soil, and the sun. Even if any one of these factors doesn’t match the exact quantity and quality required, your plant would either dry out or turn yellow.

Therefore, we have compiled some tips, tricks, and regulations to prevent your plants from hanging low this season. These amazing tactics will surely help you watering your plants just the right amount and only when your plants need it to keep your garden evergreen.

Let’s have a look.

1. General Rule of Thumb

First and foremost, it is important to know the general rule of watering your garden. However, if you are into gardening and growing plants, you might already know this. An understood rule when it comes to watering plants is to water an inch or at least 2 to 5cm of water with a week’s interval of deep, infrequent watering. Even though many factors come into play, many common garden plants do well under this tactic.

2. Weather Conditions

It’s pretty obvious that you have to consider the weather conditions of your area when it comes to watering your garden. For instance, hot and dry weather means that you should water your plants a little more often than usual. On the other hand, if it is rainy weather, your garden is obviously getting plenty of natural water and seldom requires watering. However, it is important to save your leaves from molding and sunburn. This results in case the leaves are left wet for long.

3. Even Water Distribution

Many plants thrive if their soil is evenly moisturized and watered accordingly. For instance, if you heavily water only one side of the plant, it may disrupt the nutrient absorption system in the soil. It may cause the plant to get dry patches, yellow leave, and experience uneven growth and poor quality. Therefore, always water thoroughly around the plant and irrigate your whole garden area as evenly as possible.

4. Specific Plant Requirements

Understandably, different plants have different watering needs. Thus, making it important for you to pay attention to how they dictate such needs. For instance, larger plants in your garden will need more water. Similarly, the newly planted seeds and those that have just started to show greens require more water too. On the flipside, flower beds, vegetables and perennials have shallow roots. Hence, an infrequent, large quantity of watering suits them best as compared to frequent, shallow watering.

5. Timing

It is in best practice to water your plants either early in the morning or later in the evening. To ensure maximum water assimilation by plants, the idea is to water your plants during cooler parts of the day. If you water your garden during the day, when the sun is high up, the water would evaporate and dry out quicker, giving less time for the plants and roots to absorb it. Therefore, timing is crucial for watering plants, so they get their required time to absorb the water and nutrients.

6. Watering the Roots

Many people don’t realize, but watering the plants is not like showering or spraying the garden with water. A technique allows the water to reach the roots accordingly, which consequently affects the plants’ growth. This is commonly known as “requirement-suited watering,” where sufficient water reaches the roots.

So in order to achieve the best results, make sure to provide a good amount of water that reaches the roots, and you have to make sure that it does. Because most of the time, where you may feel that there is enough water, your plants take time to absorb it, and when they do, it isn’t enough. Therefore, the best way is to water your garden in parts.

You can follow a self-made procedure to water the grown ones first, then head over to the flower beds, move on to vegetables and then go around a second time, watering all the plants all over again accordingly, giving them their rightful time. Hence, repeatedly watering in parts to cover the roots is one of the best practices to follow.

7. Avoid Waterlogging

As discussed above, watering the roots repeatedly in parts is essential for the best plant growth. But one of the primary setbacks of including this routine in your daily watering is waterlogging. Waterlogging is not a good way to allow plants a sufficient amount of water because it clogs the breathing of the roots through the soil. As the roots begin to drown without oxygen, you will find your plants disheveled in a day’s time. Therefore, a proper drainage system is also necessary to keep the amount of water in check and avoid Waterlogging.

Our Final Thoughts

Gardening and growing plants is an amazing hobby to take up. Not only do you reap the fruit of it quite literally, but you also engage in an environment-friendly activity on your own. Understanding watering your garden is a crucial point to maintain a healthy, green garden. Many people find it challenging at first but continuous practice and attention to detail should help you get the hang of it. Therefore, we hope that the tips and tricks we have shared with you turn out helpful for you to enjoy a beautiful, fresh garden area of your own.

Happy planting!