Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
- EP289 Watering Tips & Keeping Plants Looking Great In This Dry Spell: The Watering Wisdom You Desperately Need
Water might be the most overlooked factor in garden success. As temperatures soar and rainfall becomes scarce across the UK and Ireland, understanding proper watering techniques has never been more crucial for garden survival.
This episode tackles the surprisingly complex art of effective watering. While not the most glamorous gardening topic, it addresses the root cause of numerous garden problems listeners have been experiencing recently. From struggling roses to disease-prone hedges and undersized fruits, water stress weakens plants' natural defenses and opens the door to numerous secondary issues.
We dive into optimal watering timing (early morning wins, midday loses), proper techniques (target the root zone, not the foliage), and essential strategies for container plants (regular, consistent moisture prevents compost from drying out and shrinking). Discover why grouping containers creates beneficial microclimates and how mulching dramatically improves moisture retention during drought conditions.
The episode also explores how this year's abundant fruit set is being compromised by insufficient ground moisture, particularly for apples which require significant water to size properly. Learn why Portuguese laurel hedges are increasingly susceptible to fungal issues during drought stress, and why liquid seaweed extract is your secret weapon for rejuvenating stressed plants.
Whether you're facing hosepipe bans or simply want to maximize water efficiency, these practical watering insights will help your garden thrive through challenging conditions. Apply these techniques to keep your plants vigorous and resistant to pests and diseases through the remainder of summer and into autumn.
If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
Email: info@mastermygarden.com
Master My Garden Courses:
https://mastermygarden.com/courses/
Check out Master My Garden on the following channels
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mastermygarden/
Instagram @Mastermygarden https://www.instagram.com/mastermygarden/
Until next week
Happy gardening
John
How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 289 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode, I can pretty much guarantee you before we start it's not going to be the most popular episode. In fact, it's slightly boring, and the reason I know this is because I've sort of covered it before. It's the topic of watering in the garden, but the reason I'm covering it is that in the last week, I've got at least 10 messages from people just in relation to having plants that are struggling for various reasons, and I'll get into that in a minute. It's not all to do with watering, however. Watering, or the lack of water, is potentially the root cause of a lot of it and, as I said, this episode, or this episode type, tends not to be overly popular and, to be fair, is on the boring side.
Speaker 1:Having said that, it's hugely important in terms of, you know, in terms of keeping the garden looking good, keeping your plants, your vegetables, your fruits, your flowers all looking good and reaching their maximum potential over the, you know, the latter half of August and into September and October, and I suppose you know the evidence is there at the minute what we've had is fantastic weather, you know, from the point of view of getting outside, it's been warm, quite, you know, the last week, particularly very, very humid blasts of sunshine and not that much rain. Where I am we've had, you know, a little blast of rain today, but it really has been a heavy shower for like three or four minutes, but nothing that's going to water the ground. With the temperatures being so warm, it's literally evaporating, you know, as it, as it lands, essentially there is quite heavy night dews as well. So there is, you know, there's that little bit of moisture, but generally speaking things are very, very dry. And if you look across the uk for a lot of the listeners over there, you'll know that you have been in hosepipe bands for a good number of weeks and months, depending on the area that you're in.
Speaker 1:And here in Ireland we now have, I think it's six or eight counties or regions within counties that have water conservation bans, as they call them here, as opposed to hosepipe bans, but essentially it's the same thing. That means you're not allowed to use the water for leisure purposes, for washing your car, for watering your garden, for filling, you know, swimming pools at the back of your house, and so on and so on. It has to be purely for the purpose of a functioning household, essentially. You know, sports pitches are not allowed, that are on the mains water system, are not allowed to irrigate and various things like that and the you know when you see that happening it means we've had a very, very dry spell or a long period of dry weather, and you know, I'm not exactly sure of rainfall levels, but they certainly have been low. When the rain falls it's fallen very, very heavy for short periods of time but it's disappearing really, really quickly and you're getting this, this runoff, but then in general the ground is dry, like if you look at any of your local rivers and streams, you will find that they're quite low. Now I know there is certain areas that have got substantial falls of rain over the last kind of week or two, but as a general thing, across Ireland and the UK particularly, we are seeing really really long periods of dry weather and I suppose that's what has sort of led to these questions over the last week.
Speaker 1:They're none of them specifically relate to watering per se, but they're different questions or different pictures that people are sending me, and they're all of various plants struggling, things like hedging, picking up diseases. There was a picture of a lovely standard rose which somebody had, you know, purchased and planted in the springtime, and now it's just, it's really really struggling and not specifically related to, you know, struggling with disease basically, but it's off the back of being under stress and a huge amount of plants, including more mature plants, are under stress because of the lack of moisture that has generally been in the ground for a long time now, and I'm sure when this episode goes out a week later we'll be talking about having too much ram. But as it stands today, this is the, this is the cause of so many people's issues. I'm getting a lot of of messages around tomatoes, particularly so bursting, and, you know, disease issues and things like that. So they're all somewhat related to watering, to the lack of water, to inconsistent watering, to not correct watering and, generally speaking, when it comes to watering, people just really and truly don't know when they should water, they don't know how much to water, and you know there's all those, there's all those things.
Speaker 1:How much do you give a plant, how much do you need to put in a hanging basket and so on? And the answer to that is is difficult, and I suppose if you're, if you're, gardening for a long time you won't use any. You know set sort of formally. You're not going to say I'm going to use x amount of liters of water on a plant. You, generally speaking, will know by a look or by a glance that a plant is under pressure or is starting to come under stress. Now I don't mean, you see it, when it's gone crispy and it's completely burnt, that's way too late. But when you get, you know, sort of used to this, you will notice when a plant is going from the point of being very, very comfortable to slightly coming under stress and at that point you'll know to water. And you'll know to water quite well. But I suppose, as best I can, all I'm going to do is sort of give you the, the general points and tips.
Speaker 1:Um, huge temperatures in greenhouses, and that's a big factor as well in terms of what we're seeing in diseases. There's a good bit of disease in certain things like tomatoes. At the moment. We're seeing temperatures kind of 35 degrees in greenhouses consistently over the last few weeks, and that's you know, it's generally something that we're not overly used to. Nighttime temperatures are remaining quite high then as well, so the plants are constantly in that warmth. And then couple that with, maybe, a lack of ventilation in the greenhouse and then you're getting this. You're getting these fungal diseases building up. So you know you can. It's understandable, but the stress on the plant originally is is the cause of a lot of it. So we'll go through, as I say, potentially the most boring podcast episode that I've covered, but I think, one that might be useful for people just the same and we'll look at how to water and you know when you should water as best as possible.
Speaker 1:Now there is the, you know the obvious one, and I see loads of people online at the moment saying that you should water at night time and early morning, and that's obviously to avoid scorch. So if you spray your plants with with water, you get water splashes on the leaves, and you do that during intense sunshine. That intense sun sort of acts as if you know when it hits the, the water on the, on the leaf, it acts like a magnifying glass and it causes leaf scorch, and that's the reason, one of the reasons why you don't do it in full sun in the middle of the day. The other, the other main reason, is that you're getting a lot of evaporation at that time of the day. So if you water, a big percentage of that won't get into the plant. It'll be evaporated up and the plant will get little to no benefit on it at that stage. So I would say the best time in my opinion for for watering is early morning, and especially when we're talking about things like tomatoes or like flowers or anything like that, because when you do that then the temperatures rise, the sunshine comes out and it dries off those leaves very, very quickly. If you do that same thing at night time, while it's warm and we're getting some bit of a breeze, but at night time if you water, you can get leaves that are sitting damp for 12 hours overnight until they burn off the next morning and that can cause sort of fungal diseases or, I suppose, create conditions that helps fungal diseases get established. So morning time for me is the best time, evening time is the second best, and stay away from midday sun when possible.
Speaker 1:Don't water the leaves at all. You know whether we're talking about a hanging basket or a pot or a container at the door, or whether you're talking about a hedge or a tomato plant in your tunnel, or flowers or perennials or whatever it is, roses, anything like that the best thing to do is to water the ground, to water the root zone, as opposed to watering the leaves. You don't want to water the leaves, hardly at all. So the idea there is that it's going to. You're keeping the leaves dry, it's going to get into the area where it's required. It's hopefully going to soak in and get into the plant really really quickly that way. So root, root or ground watering is what you're looking to do. Same in a hanging basket it can be quite difficult, you know, to do that. So you'd see a lot of people. They'll just spray the hanging basket. A lot of that is going to run off. It's going to just the canopy of leaves and flowers is just going to turn the water away and you'll get very, very little into that root, you know, into that root zone of a hanging basket or a planter. Looking to do is, even if you have to move a couple of plants out of the way, just get your hose, your watering can or whatever it is, whatever method it is that you're using the water and make sure you're getting it in onto that root zone.
Speaker 1:Particularly on things that are grown in containers, you're better off to water regularly. So, even small and often, and that means that the the compost or growing media that you're using, never dries out, because if it dries out it shrinks and then when you go to water the next time as many of you will have seen it'll just run straight through the planter, straight through the hanging basket, and it's very, very difficult. At that stage the compost is almost impossible to actually wet back up again and all you'll end up doing then is pouring water. It'll run through, the plant will get a little drink out of it, but not a lot, and eventually you'll see that the plants are just under stress all the time and the flower or whatever, will diminish very, very, very quickly. So when you're in containers, it's little and often as much as possible if you can group your pots together, because they will shade one, shade one another, number one, so you'll get less heat on the side of you know, coming through the sides of the pots. And when they're grouped together they're much, much easier and much more efficient to water as well, because if you're trying to water them one here, one there they're going to be getting full sun the whole way around. The pots themselves are going to heat up a little bit more and they're going to transpire a good bit more. So by grouping them together they'll keep one other slightly colder. They'll be a little bit more shady there, and then you water into the pots as best you can. Obviously, if you're in containers pots particularly again or troughs or window boxes, as much as possible try and use a tray so that the water that is going in is not just flowing away on the ground. You're actually holding it there and over time then it'll go back up, it'll wick up through the compost or, if the roots are established enough, the roots will be able to drink from the bottom of the pot and soak that water back up. The idea is to keep as much possible water in those as possible, but enough. Then if you, as I say, allow it dry out, then it'll be very, very difficult to water again. So that's the you know those couple of things.
Speaker 1:And mulching as well, mulching in general. We've said this before. Obviously you know time of the year. The best time of the year to do your mulching is the winter time, but at the moment, if you, if you're looking to keep beds looking vibrant and you're needing to water, especially newly planted stuff, then by watering and mulching the ground and mulching the ground can be with anything, anything that covers down that you know that root zone is going to be good. So whether that's bark mulch, whether that's good quality quality compost you know mushroom compost, even fresh grass clippings in a small layer on top of the ground, they will keep the ground slightly cooler, they will reduce the amount of evaporation that you'll get around the plant. So after you water, cover him with a little layer of mulch and that will help with that, with the retention of the water there, and that's that's hugely beneficial. It's been most beneficial to do it in the winter time, but at the moment, even if you're watering and you're needing to water, then that's going to be massively important.
Speaker 1:I've seen reports of quite a lot of more mature and established trees and shrubs that are starting to struggle and some are even dying in the ground, and you know that's because of in certain areas there hasn't been rain in a really, really long time. As I say here, we've had little bits of spells of rain here and there and that's probably meaning that you know there's enough moisture in the ground. It's certainly struggling, but I know in certain areas talking to people down in parts of Waterford recently and they haven't seen any meaningful rain in two to three months and obviously couple that with high temperatures, with that really warm week in July we have these sort of last kind of week or two where it's been really warm and dry and the wind and you can imagine how dry the ground is and that that's meaning that you know, even established shrubs and and trees are struggling. Another thing that has come in quite a bit recently is have like it has been a fantastic year, or it is a fantastic year to date, for fruit, and a huge amount of fruit trees around the country are teeming, particularly with apples and plums and so on, and ones that have got the chance to mature are doing really good. But say, for example, if you have an apple tree and it's a slightly later harvesting one you might have like, for example, I have an apple tree at the moment, a small apple tree. It's only planted three years now. There's a lot of fruit on it but because the ground is so dry they really are struggling to bulk out, because fruit trees they need a lot of water in the ground to actually fill out those fruits over the next couple of months, over the next couple of months. So I think I'm going to have to. There's some of them not ready, but if it stays, continues to be dry, I'm going to have to take off some of that fruit to allow the ones that are left there to fully mature, because the moisture is just not going to be there to fill them all out. And you're seeing that a lot. You're seeing a lot of red apples on trees but a lot of small ones. Plumsums, you know, luckily enough, mostly they'll mature earlier and they require, you know there's a lot of monos. They require a little bit less water to fill out the individual fruits. So you know you get away with them a little bit more. But apples particularly, you're seeing a lot of small apples at the moment that are just not filling out, and that's. You know that's a consequence of there not being enough moisture in the ground. New plantings of hedges are definitely going to be struggling for water. They ideally you've mentioned it before you need to keep water on them the whole time. So you're better off to have an automatic or a porous pipe or something like that that allows that moisture to continue to be given to the plants.
Speaker 1:Um, fungal disease I mentioned earlier on, there seems to be a lot of fungal disease build up at the moment, particularly on roses, on hedges, portuguese laurel, and that's something we'll need to come back to. You know we start talking about hedging again in the autumn time. I've mentioned before, hedges come and go, different periods of time and different fashions, and Portuguese laurel is one that was vastly popular, was hugely popular over the last eight to 10 years, and rightly so. In terms of its look, it's a beautiful hedge and you know, for those first few times, first few years, almost no disease issues. But certainly over the last 18 to 24 months we're seeing a huge amount of mildew issues, huge amount of shot hole issues on Portuguese laurel and they're coming to the fore now, especially on hedges that are struggling a little bit with, you know, with the lack of water that has been there. So you know, we've said before numerous times, a healthy plant, a vigorous plant, a strong plant, is able to withstand all of these, you know, fungal diseases and attacks from pests and so on, and that's generally speaking the case, pests and so on, and that's generally speaking the case. You know, the stronger the base, the less opportunity there is for anything to cause problems. However, with this long period of dry time, we're finding that a lot of these plants are under stress generally, and then these stresses are allowing the fungal infections and so on to catch hold, catch hold.
Speaker 1:And again just recently I've heard of a couple of, you know, fairly substantial growers of hedging and their decision now is to not grow portuguese laurel anymore. So, interestingly enough, interestingly enough, I have one. It is struggling with a little bit of mildew on it. I used some microbes on it early in the year and it did a fantastic job For two or three months. It looked absolutely spectacular. It is reverting a little bit now and there is a little bit of mildew on it again. So it's something that I'm going to have to keep on top of. And you know, that's the thing with hedges you don't really want to be doing anything with them. You have to cut them once a year. Typically speaking. You don't want to be doing a whole lot else other than that with them. So yeah, portuguese laurel there is just starting to cause a few issues.
Speaker 1:The other thing to watch out for in terms of watering if you have any plant that for any reason gets stressed but for lack of water, whether that's, you know, hanging baskets, roses, vegetables, whatever it is. If they've got a little bit dry and they are slightly stressed off the back of that, probably the best thing to bring them back and to bring back a little bit of vigor to them is seaweed, and I've spoke about it before on the podcast. It really is fantastic. So if you can get a liquid seaweed and give that a feed two or three times a week with liquid seaweed, give it two or three weeks and you will see huge improvements in that plant, whatever it is so really does. When, when a plant has been under stress, seaweed is really brilliant to bring them back, you know, to bring them back into vigour again. So if you have anything that has struggled, that's what you need to reach for. On top of that, then you need to keep mulching, as I said, group pots together where you get the opportunity, so that you're not wasting the water as much as possible. Water the base, mulch down on top of that then so that you're not getting the evaporation and really, really that's about it.
Speaker 1:You know, there's, there's, um, there's not much else you can do where, generally speaking, here it's. It's the weather has been dry, but there is enough moisture in the ground. Very few flowers are struggling, a little bit of veg, all right, and maybe the apples. As I said, they might prefer a little bit more moisture and but generally speaking, it has been a really, really brilliant year for flower, for for veg and things like that, in this area particularly. But I do know that, as I say, certain areas they've had probably a drive for a really, really long time now and they're struggling. And I know in know that, as I say, certain areas they've had probably a drive for a really really long time now and they're struggling.
Speaker 1:And I know in the uk, as I say, you're talking about hose pipe bans ongoing now for up to three months in some places. So you know it definitely is a challenge of a different nature and you know, listening back, if you listen back to last year, we were talking about wet, we're talking about lack of sun and you know, here we are 12 months later and it's it's a different thing. So there's always, always a challenge and, as I said, this is definitely going to be one of the most boring episodes that that we're likely to to have on the podcast. But at least at least 10 people got in touch this week with various problems and I would say the majority of them are stemming from, you know, a water stress issue originally. So whether that was you know the person that sent me the the pictures of the standard rows under pressure to the fruit trees, they're all stemming from the fact that plants are generally under pressure at the moment and because they're under pressure again, as we, a strong base, can withstand all these things, but when they're under stress they're a lot more open and susceptible to any of these things. So hopefully those tips will help people as best you can, stay on top of your watering. Mulch down, make it as easy for yourself as possible, get to know when something looks like it needs a drop of water. You know. Mulch down, make it as easy for yourself as possible. Get to know when something looks like it needs a drop of water. You know. Obviously pots are going to need it all the time, maybe twice a day even in some cases. But in the open ground, if you see something that you think is looking a little bit tired, then it likely isn't in need of a little bit of water. So where you can, obviously with horse pipe bands, but where you can get your water and get out and get watering and anything that has got a little bit of stress. Then just boost it up with a bit of seaweed liquid seaweed as well.
Speaker 1:Last week's episode it was recorded a good while ago, but really super episode with Josh Tickell. Those documentaries for anyone that hasn't watched them are fantastic and really worth checking out. Last week's episode I really enjoyed it myself just even listening to it. There's so much in it, the documentaries, I love them anyway. So to have Josh on was really good. Some really good guest interviews coming up over the next couple of weeks as well. But for this week's episode that's it. The slightly boring topic of watering, but hopefully some of you have got something out of this and you know it helps your plants to look good for the next couple of months, to bring your veg and your fruit to reach its max potential. And you know, as I I say, a boring topic but a quite important one at the same time. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.