What is the best way to water my garden?

In times of water shortage gardeners are often blamed for wasting water, but most gardeners understand the value of water and how precious it is.

There are several different ways to water a garden, but the first thing to consider is whether it is necessary at all. Newly planted trees and shrubs and even bedding plants do require watering when there has been no rain to ensure that their roots are able to take up moisture. Unless the roots have had time to grow down towards the water table and to damper soil the root ball will quickly dry out when rainfall is low. This can even happen in the winter!

Generally plants will tell you when they need watering and while it’s not a good idea to wait until they are really stressed before you water, you can watch out for tell tale signs, the most obvious of which is wilting. But root damage including waterlogging and root rots can also cause a plant to wilt, so do make sure you are doing the right thing.

You can water the garden, your greenhouse or any of your plants manually by filling a watering can with water from an outside tap or water but and delivering it to your plants. This is hard work, but the good thing is that it makes you restrict your watering to the plants and areas that really need it.

You can water your garden using a hose or a sprinkler, but this should be kept to a minimum because it uses gallons of water. You need to direct the water to where it is needed most and concentrate on one area at a time.

Don’t superficially wet the soil surface; it is actually better to water your garden thoroughly once a week (when needed) than to wet the surface daily. That’s because you need to train your plants to grow deep roots that reach down to the moist deeper soil and towards the water table. Of course if they are growing in pots and grow bags then they are totally dependent on you for water, so you need to water them daily or even twice daily in hot weather. You can reduce your watering to pots and containers by choosing special water holding compost for containers and using large pots with a greater volume for compost wherever possible, the bigger the better, larger amounts of compost will take longer to dry out.

If you have an outside tap (or even a waterbutt) you can set up an automatic watering system that waters before you wake up or in your absence. All you need is a special timer that opens and shuts a valve allowing water to pass down your watering system. You can lay perforated pipes around vulnerable or newly planted plants, these will seep water into the soil around the roots of your plants.

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