A Watering Schedule for Weaning Your New Plants
Despite unseasonably cool weather, if you plant now, watering will fast become a burden and you will not do your part to meet the official goal of using 10% less water than last year.
Young plants need watering almost daily until they get established, which takes at least three weeks and would put us into July. Just to keep your hand in it, you still could plant the occasional thing, a bougainvillea, perhaps, or some other subtropical that does best if planted when it’s warm.
You can keep planting things in containers where daily watering is needed almost any time of the year. Or you could work now in the vegetable garden, because vegetables are better planted a little at a time so you are not overwhelmed by bumper crops.
But other things had better wait until fall. This doesn’t mean take off the rest of summer. You still need to water and weed.
What should be done now is weaning. Those new plants--requiring so much water initially--should get it less often now that they’re taking hold. Here’s the regimen I follow.
The first week I water new plantings daily, if they were put in from small packs or pots. Things planted from larger nursery containers get watered every two to three days. If it gets really hot, I may even water more often--you almost can’t overdo it at first, though you definitely can later on.
The second week I water less; the third week I water even less often but each time longer. I am supposing that the roots are growing into the soil, so at first only the top few inches of soil must be kept moist. But as the roots grow deeper, the water must soak deeper, so I water longer.
After about a month, I have weaned most plants from frequent watering. They get watered about once a week in summer, about every two weeks the rest of the year. I water for about 20 minutes, sometimes more, so it soaks deep.
By weaning, I have encouraged roots to grow deep where the water is not lost to evaporation and where the plants have a reservoir to draw on. Few roots remain in the top few inches, which is good for the plant, because that is where temperatures fluctuate wildly and where moisture is not a sure thing.
If you try this system, do not stop frequent watering quickly. It will take plants at least a month to adjust, maybe longer.
Occasionally, I find a plant that does not adapt to its new home and watering regimen as quickly. These get a little extra water until they get established like the others. I keep a bunch of old watering cans nearby to do this.
I water everything else--except the lawn--with a small, portable sprinkler or by soaking. The little round sprinkler works well for me because I can custom-water each area. If, for example, one part of a bed is full of new plants, I can water just them. When plants get too tall for the sprinkler to clear them, I put the sprinkler on a spike that holds it 3 feet in the air, above the plants.
When flowers are in full bloom, I soak them from underneath, so the droplets’ weight doesn’t topple them.
Most trees and shrubs get watered along with whatever grows near them; on occasion I treat them, especially fruit trees, to their own soaking.
The lawn is the exception. The back lawn gets watered twice weekly. The front lawn is an inherited mix of common Bermuda grass and St. Augustine. It looks so bad I wonder why I even bother to water it. It is 40 years old and needs to be redone, but I’ve left it alone, because it also serves as a soccer field, wrestling mat, dance floor and spot for skateboarders to crash.
The lawn in back is new, a turf-type fescue. It looks great and watering it makes a big difference. Though this lawn was supposed to be drought-resistant, it is not, and it must be watered at least twice weekly, sometimes more. It often needs a little water at midday or it looks peaked.
By the way, spritzing things midday is OK when it’s really hot. It doesn’t burn the plants, which find it just as refreshing as people do, and it helps them get through some of those sizzling summer days.
