Watering

Watering could be really simple subject, just putting water, giving it to plants. And yet there's a lot to know about watering and to do it efficiently so that you're not wasting water, giving water at the best time of growth. And that's all the things that we're looking at here. And also this is a video only about hand watering. I'm not explaining irrigation systems or setting up drip lines or anything like that for two reasons. One is that in most plots like mine here, there are very varied crops and they all need different amounts of water at different stages of growth. So the disadvantage of any watering system is that once it's in place, you can't really vary it. You've got drip lines coming out at a certain point and you can't vary the flow within that method. The other thing is it's quite expensive and time consuming actually to set up. Whereas this approach, the time that one spends on hand watering, I feel is really worthwhile because whenever I'm hand watering, I always notice things. You know, I'm always seeing, there's a bit of weeding needs doing there or tidying up here or pruning there, or there's a bit of pest damage I need to do something to. So many, many reasons why hand watering is really good. And there's one beautiful thing about watering that often puts people off watering on a bright sunny day like this, which is sunlight. And it's said that you shouldn't water in bright sunlight because the leaves will scorch from sun passing through the drops of water. Don't worry about that. It's just not true. But if you think about it, you know, thunderstorm in the summer and then the sun comes out, well, all the fields would be scorched. So I'm very happy if I need to. I'm just doing this as an example. This beetroot here actually doesn't really need any water at this point, but I'm just making the point that yeah, you can water in bright sunlight. The sun on those drops is not going to hurt those beetroot leaves. To make the most of water, precious water we're putting on in the summer months, we can prepare ahead in the winter by, for example, having the soil mulched. In this case, I'm mulching with compost, so it actually looks rather like soil, but it's organic matter, which holds moisture. Organic matter is like a sponge. So that means that when it does rain or when we water, it holds onto that water and it doesn't drain through so readily. And then it's there for longer for use by plant roots. And no dig really helps as well. So this soil has not been disturbed or turned up at all in winter, spring, summer, or autumn. It's just left like that. And that means that there's less exposure to air of the precious moisture, which is in there. And then another interesting thing is how, even with organic matter, the surface does dry out. Even if you've got unrotted organic matter mulches like straw or hay, as plants grow, they pull the moisture out. And so even under the mulch, it can become dry. And then with a compost mulch like this, the issue a bit is how well the water soaks in just at first. And when I water, the first little bit of watering, especially if the bed is mounded at all and there's a slope, runs off until that surface has become moist and then it can absorb the moisture. So then you water again and the water soaks in more. So if you are starting from a very dry surface, it's better to water a little and let it soak in and then come back and do some more. So say you were doing, or if I was doing a whole bed like this, for example, and it's starting very dry, I'd work along the stages watering and then come back and do another watering and then maybe a third, even a fourth. So putting it on bit by bit rather than trying to flood it all when quite a bit will run off. So there's a whole little art to doing that. And then one last thing is checking. It's often surprising when you've put on water and the surface looks moist and you think, right, that's it, job done. Just have a look. And it's quite often surprising how the water has not actually soaked in very much. And going back to what I was saying about organic matter holding moisture, just a very small amount of area can hold a lot. So it doesn't soak in very far. So when you water, give a good soak and be sure that the water has really soaked in. So water more thoroughly, less often, which actually saves time in the end. And you know then that your plants will have moisture for a little while. It's often recommended that one water in the evening so that water has time to soak in and be used by plants overnight, not wasted so much. But in fact, in damp climates further from the equator where there can be other issues with having plants wet in the evening and overnight, such as slugs, mildew, I find it works best to water early in the morning like now. And I'm just dropping water on my seedlings. That's another thing that's sometimes recommended you don't do. It's fine to give seedlings like this water from above. If anything, it helps them to sort of stiffen up. And if you do it in the early morning like this, it means that by the evening, the leaves and the compost soil are dry. So there's less mildew, less slugs overnight, which is when damage can happen. Watering is sometimes made to sound a bit complicated, but you can do it like this. Just dropping water right on leaves. These lettuce are three weeks old. They were planted as quite small seedlings. It's summer, so they're growing fast. And look how tough the leaves are. They're happy to have these nice big drops on them. Or if you want to be more gentle, you can do that. Just a finger over the end of the hose. And here, because these are leafy plants that needs a lot of moisture to grow, more than 90% water in the new leaves, which they're making all the time. I am watering them quite a bit. So these have been watered in dry weather every two or three days. And again, giving quite a decent drop so that the water is really soaking in, not just making a thin layer on top. When seedlings are small, small plants, and they're not taking up a lot of space in a bed, for example, it's more efficient to use the water straight onto their roots. So I'll take the rose off the can. And these plants we put in only five days ago, in fact. So all their roots are still in a small area just below the leaves. Therefore, particularly if you're wanting to be economical with water, it's very good at this stage. It hasn't rained since they went in. So that's five days. And I haven't watered them either, actually. So they're ready for a bit of rain. And I'm just giving that, you can see the water's running off a bit too because the surface is so dry. So I'll do this twice. But basically, just firing a little bit of water into the roots is the most economical and efficient way to get these plants watered at this stage. It'll be the second time now when I'm doing that. And the water's soaking in much better at that point. And here, if I can get a decent amount of water on them and it doesn't rain again for another four or five days, actually maybe three, then that will do it. So plants at different stages of growth need different amounts of water. Like these seedlings we pricked out just a week ago, still small, don't need watering quite so often. These quite big now in proportion to the amount of compost, although they will grow some more yet. In fact, we can see they haven't fully colonized the compost there, but they're still getting to the stage where they need more water. And so with little seedlings, it is absolutely fine to water on top like that. Sometimes it's recommended you turn the rows over. You don't need to do that. That is good. And with the bigger ones, I'll do them sometimes twice just to make sure that that compost is fully saturated. And the advantage of doing that is, particularly if you're going away, that you can rest calm in the knowledge that your young plants will have enough moisture in there for a couple of days even. I've done this sometimes even being away for three days in sunny weather and they've been okay. They haven't been starved of water. And one way to check that after watering is lift the tray and feel how heavy it is. And in fact, that wasn't feeling quite as heavy as I thought it might. So just give it a bit more water. This is organic compost, so the nutrients are not leaching out in the same way as it can with non-organic. So I lift it again and it's feeling heavier. So yeah, that's good. Different vegetables need different amounts of water and at different stages of their life. Basil is a fascinating example because when it's a seedling, it can easily be killed by over-watering. I know from experience. So when they're just germinating little seeds and as little young seedling plants in pots or trays, they actually, the compost that they're growing in wants to be roughly 50% dry so that there's plenty of air around those little developing roots. They're very susceptible to being waterlogged, the roots are, and then the plants just die. They'll keel over and just disappear. Whereas you keep them a bit dry. But at this stage, now that they're fully growing in full leaf, they've got their roots well down into the compost and then the soil, they want plenty of water to make lots of harvest. So already we've harvested lots of leaves off these basil plants. Seven weeks of picking. This is now the middle of summer and they started in the late spring even. So I'm keeping the compost there pretty moist so that they can make lots of leaves. And it's a leaf vegetable. So vegetables for which we want to keep picking the leaves generally need more water than vegetables of which we are picking fruits or roots. They don't need quite so much water to do their thing in terms of what we want. So this basil, we're going to be harvesting it tomorrow, taking off these shoots, which we're doing every week. And I'm watering it every two days if it's really hot sun, maybe every three days if it's not so sunny, twice a week if it's a bit cloudy. So various options within that, but generally keep it well watered at this stage of growth. Fruiting vegetables like these runner beans and borlotti beans are best watered when they're in full flower because at this stage of their growth, they're starting to convert flowers into pods, which is the bit we want to eat. And if they're short of water at this stage, the flowers can abort and not make any pod. Whereas I'm just looking here actually and I can see a little pod on that stalk there, for example. So that suggests that they are receiving enough water. And by contrast, next to them are borlotti beans that were actually sown at the same time, but are a little bit more dependent on warmth and heat than the traditional British runner bean or pole bean. And these borlotti or French beans are therefore a bit further behind. They got hit by some quite vicious winds we had in early June. I didn't think they were going to make it actually. And then they got nibbled by rabbits as well. So they've recovered, but they are behind and they're only just starting to flower. So I haven't thought about watering them at all until now. And I'll wait until probably another week until they're looking quite full of flower. And if it doesn't rain before that end of that week, I'll start giving them some water at this stage of growth, but not before. In terms of how much water they need, root vegetables come pretty much bottom of the list because they grow quite slowly and the roots swell gradually over quite a long period of time. There's no pressure of water demand to make a fantastic sudden surge of growth. And in fact, underwater root vegetables are often sweeter, have a nicer flavor. But having said that, these are golden beetroot here, which I sowed in April, around about the 10th, 12th of April. And we planted them here as plug seedlings, multi-sown, three or four in a clump on the 1st of May. It's now the 18th of July. So they've been in the ground two and a half months. And if I pull one, there's a clump of four here and you can see the growth is good. It's a really nice beetroot. So it's not been a very wet spring here or anything. In fact, we've had some quite long dry periods and I've just left them be to chug along at their own speed. That is an unwatered beetroot, golden beetroot, grown in a clump of four, very easy. Undercover growing is different in terms of water, obviously, because it doesn't rain. So you need to be more on the case, in this case, polytunnel or greenhouse, whatever, but it doesn't still need to be every day. Here, for example, I'm watering on average every three days through the summer months. And in the winter, when I'm growing salad in here, I water no more than once a fortnight in the middle of winter when it's quite dark and the air is damp, the plants are not growing very fast. So they're not actually using much moisture. Whereas at this time of year, we have lots of leaves. And so that's a lot of transpiration going on. And I'm watering on average every three days. So for example, this was last watered in here on Friday. Now it's Monday. I'm even not watering today. It's gonna happen tomorrow. That's a four-day interval in the middle of summer when it has not been brilliant sun. So, you know, I've given you all this information, which I hope will free you up a bit in terms of, you know, the pressure of watering. Like, do you need to do it every day? Often not. Seedlings, yeah, but most plants not. And different plants at different stages need different amounts. So I hope these clues are all helping you to do your watering more efficiently, save water, save time.