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How to Water Flowering Plants
Watering Needs
This page will answers your key questions about how much and how often to water flowering plants in containers and in landscape plantings.
Better yet, you’ll also find demonstrations of proper watering methods with simple descriptions and clear pictures.
Over and over again, the conditions found in your landscape affect how flowers grow in your yard.
As you would imagine, water evaporates at a much slower rate in a shade garden than in a sunny one, where falling leaves from overhead trees, properly composted, often act as water-retentive mulch.
Look at your garden with an eye towards moisture.
Trying to strike compromises between plantings that feature both dry-loving plants and those that prefer moisture will suit neither group. Always plant with flower that have similar watering needs in a single bed, border, or container garden.
Likewise, group your plantings according to their light requirements.
If in doubt, check the soil by your flowers before you water. Dig down 4–5 inches (10–13 cm). If the soil is still damp, delay watering.
Too much water terminates root growth and cuts off oxygen, allowing root rot to set in. The only exception is moisture-loving plants suited to tropical, bog, or shoreline conditions where soggy soil is desirable. Such plantings actually benefit from regular misting.
Water infrequently but deeply to encourage root growth. In most climates, that means a deep watering once a week, applying 1–2 in. (25–50 mm) of water in total at each irrigation.
Increase frequency if your soil is fast-draining, sandy, or coarse. The opposite is true if you live in an area with heavy clay soils that are slow to absorb water but miserly about releasing it once wet.
Several methods are effective for watering flower gardens. If your beds are small or containers are few, watering by hand with a watering can or hose may be practical and efficient.
Use watering cans and hose-end nozzles fitted that deliver water gently. Outfit hoses with long-handled wands for container plantings and to reach deep into flower borders.
High-humidity plants such as fuchsia or orchids might benefit from a mist-emitting system that fogs the entire setting.
Other watering options include in-ground irrigation and simple drip systems [see: Watering Flowers and Bulbs]
Evaluate your flower garden’s needs to determine which method is best for you.
Solving Container-Watering Problems
Container gardens have a greater tendency to dry out, even with regular watering. If this problem occurs in your container flowers, try some of these simple solutions:
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- Repot the plant in a larger and less-porous container, and mix a fresh batch of soil with some polymers—jellylike nodes that hold several times their size in water, thereby reducing the need for watering.
- Put the pot into a larger container and surround it with peat moss to help slow evaporation and other moisture loss from the smaller pot.
- Group pots together, allowing their plantings to shade each other and their containers.
- Pull out weeds and other dead, unproductive, or wayward growth, all of which saps moisture and nutrients from the plantings.
- Mulch the soil surface with bark or pebbles.
- Install a drip tray under the pot to capture drainage, which can then wick back up into the soil as the temperature rises; be sure to drain or suction the tray by dusk to avoid waterlogging.
- Be wary of drainage—conventional wisdom says that a plant is sufficiently watered when it begins to drain, but that’s not always the case. If the water drains too quickly, submerge the pot above its rim in a bucket of water and when no more bubbles appear, it means the rootball has been adequately saturated.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Watering Choices and Options
Watering is the most important aspect of plant care.
Although it might seem a good idea to put your plants on a watering schedule, it’s best for them that you water only when they actually need it. Watering intervals will vary from plant to plant and from season to season.
Choose the watering method that suits your flower garden from those demonstrated here:
How to Choose a Watering Method
In many regions, natural rainfall and other precipitation is sufficient to water flowering plants in home landscapes.
Install a rain gauge and empty it at regular intervals to makes sure that your flowering plants have received enough water.
Supplemental waterings may be necessary during dry spells, or in regions with regular periods of time without rain.
Before watering, make sure that applying more water is necessary.
If in doubt, use a hand trowel to dig down between plants and check the moisture content of sub-surface soil at the flowering plants’ root zones in several areas of your landscape.
Overhead watering should only be used in the mornings of warm days when foliage and flowers will dry completely before nightfall.
Applying water with overhead spray may result in overwatering some flowering plants and under watering others.
It generally uses more water than other spot-application watering methods.
It also may damage or discolor delicate flowers.
Traditional watering cans are suitable for irrigating small flower beds and many container flower gardens.
Apply water to the soil at the base of plants, avoiding their foliage or flowers, except for moisture-loving species.
Use a garden hose with an adjustable hose-end nozzle or a water wand to hand water flowers.
Apply water to the soil at the base of each plant, avoiding wetting foliage or flowers.
Laying soaker hoses along the base of plants in long and narrow borders avoids having to water each plant by hand.
The hoses have microscopic perforations that ooze water along the length of the hose.
Water is absorbed penetrates deeply into the soil beside and under the hose.
Soaker hoses are especially good for applying water in dense soils and avoiding runoff problems.
Drip irrigation, using regulated emitters and automatic valve controls, gives each plant in your flower garden custom irrigation specific to its species.
Some drip systems also have soil-moisture sensor and rain sensors that turn on and turn off watering once their standards are programmed into the system’s controller.
For gardeners in regions with irregular rain or long periods of dry weather each season, or for busy gardeners, automatic drip irrigation is an ideal solution for watering flower gardens.
Deep Watering Plants in Containers
Proper watering—frequency and quantity—is important to the health of any flowering or foliage plant in a container.
Water most containers every few days, then allow their soil to dry before watering again. Regular waterings should occur each time a plant’s soil dries.
Every 30–60 days, deep water your plants to remove mineral salts.
Gather the materials and implements shown and follow these easy steps:
How to Deep Water Plants in Containers
Whenever a container’s soil shows signs of mineral deposits, it’s time to deep water.
This typically happens in cycles 30–60 days apart.
Begin by moving your container to a deep sink or outdoor basin in a shady spot, sheltered from wind.
Set the plant in its container into the sink or basin.
Fill the sink or basin with barely lukewarm water.
The water level should be at the rim of the plant’s container or just slightly above it.
Allow the plant to soak, submerged in the water.
Soak the plant for five minutes, after air bubbles stop being released.
Soaking dissolves encrusting minerals and salts, carrying them away from the rootball.
Remove the plant from the water.
Allow it to completely drain.
If any salt deposits remain on the soil surface, repeat the soaking process to dissolve them.
Soil is depleted of nutrients after deep watering.
When the plant has drained, apply foliar fertilizer to the plant’s leaves at half the package-recommended rate.
Apply fertilizer to the soil around the rim of the container, in a 6-in. (30-cm) wide band.
Cultivate the fertilizer into the top layer of soil with a garden hand fork.