Ok, little DISCLAIMER here: watering in the morning may be the best option even in the summer for the sake of your plants (to give them some moisture through the heat of the day) especially if you are in an area that is hot and dry even at night, or if you are dealing with lots of disease problems (which can spread through too much water).
P.S. Did anyone notice the crickets chirping right near the end of the video? Just imagine if this was shot outside! 😮
Please share this with your friends, tell me a story about your watering experience in the comments or go over and like my facebook page over here!.
Feature Photo Credit: By Kate Nielsen Photos (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
12 Comments
Lynne
September 2, 2013That is certainly a good point to bring up…
Hi Paul,
I have often wondered about the ‘burning plants’ theory, but have never seen it to be a problem. Although, I avoid watering in the heat of the day for the sake of water conservation…
Australia is for the most part, quite short of water compared to the US. We are almost permanently on water restrictions. And if you live on a farm then you are always conscious of water usage.
That being said, I have seen a few market gardens still watering in the middle of the day (they usually water out of an underground water supply, I believe).
I always feel a bit bothered seeing people watering in the middle of a hot day in Summer because of the waste of the water. Lol…
Those crickets are certainly loud! We have something similar here (well we do have crickets as well, but we also have cicadas)… Cicadas can be really, really loud. Although not near my house at the moment, which I am glad of.
Thanks for the video… You are doing a great job 🙂
Paul
September 3, 2013Hey Lynne! Yes… I can imagine that you’d want to be careful with water there. 🙂 There are places in the U.S. that have a similar problems with needing to conserve water – in fact some places actually have almost all their water pumped in from miles away which can cause huge problems… but where we are water seems to be overly abundant. Unfortunately this means we can easily become slack with our use of it (since there isn’t any real repercussions).
And we have cicadas here too… it actually might have been a mix of them with the crickets. 😉
Thanks for the encouragement!
Rebekah
September 3, 2013Interesting. We have lots of rain here. Too much at times, but there are drier periods when we have to water our gardens. I usually water in the evening or morning because it is more convenient, but I believe that I have watered in the middle of the day before and didn’t notice any harm come to my plants.
Paul
September 3, 2013Love hearing about your experience Rebekah! Sounds like it matches pretty well with mine… 🙂 We also have quite an abundance of water in our area but there are times that we virtually are forced to be watering all day long (moving a sprinkler around) just to keep some of our large fields watered.
Mary Beth & David
September 3, 2013This summer David & I finally got around to weeding our garden that David put in this spring before we were married 🙂 The beets and other plants too were somewhat shaded by the weeds.The beets were and still are in a grow box/cold frame base that David constructed and planted them in. It was about the hottest time of the day by the time we finished weeding the beets. David decided to mow the lawn while I tended to a lower part of the garden. I was hard at work weeding when I heard David’s distressed voice. “Honey, look at the beets!” Startled, I quickly went to see what was wrong and found that the previously plucky straight up beets were majorly wilted and almost flat on the dry ground. David flew into action, grabbed a water hose and doused the beets thoroughly. He repeated this procedure several times over the space of a couple hours. I was slightly worried at the time thinking that we might end up steaming them instead of helping them-but a few hours later they were standing tall and well hydrated once more-Thanks to my wise and perceptive husband 🙂
Paul
September 4, 2013Love hearing your story Mary Beth and cheers to your perceptive husband! Absolutely – is the ground dry and you plants are withering? Water them (even if it is the middle of the day)! Great job! 🙂
Silas Duke
October 1, 2013Hi Paul
Thank you for that video.
How much water do you give your plants?
God bless,
Silas
Paul
October 2, 2013Hey Silas! We don’t officially measure how much water we give them (it depends on how much rain we’ve had etc) but on average 1 inch of water per week is a good starting point. During the winter you can pull even farther back as the ground will stay moist almost all winter long.
Sherry
July 23, 2014Hi Paul,
I so enjoyed listening to you on the “Grow Your Own Food” Summit. So glad you were part of the program. Actually some of your relatives are also some of my relatives.
Thank you for sharing these thoughts on watering. I usually water in the evening for convenience sake, and I have watered in the middle of the day in summer if my plants look like they are thirsty and in need of a little water, and they seemed to appreciate it.
I have a question about how often to water your plants. I usually try to water them once a day, but some of my plants look a little bedraggled and a little yellowish on the leaves. I have had to plant mostly in containers this year, so I am wondering if every day is too much for them.
Thanks so much for your help, and for sharing your love and commitment to gardening.
Sherry in Virginia
Paul
July 23, 2014Hi Sherry – great question there and that’s neat to hear that we are related in some way.
Over-watering can definitely be a problem when growing in containers. One thing to do before watering your plants is to push your finger down into the soil and feel if it is moist. If so, go ahead and wait another day. You probably will only need to water them a few times a week.
Blessings!
Paul
Ccam
November 11, 2014Thanks for the info.
Great
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