On a rainy day like today, I'm thinking about watering.
I won't have to water anything in my garden for quite awhile after this rain. It is one of those slow, steady, soaking-in kind of rains that brings out the greenest green colors in every plant in the garden.
Of course, I would prefer that this kind of rain not occur during a day when I am on vacation to garden, but I don't always get my preference. I'm a middle child, I'm used to that.
My preference would be to get one of these rains in July or August.
When it is not raining like this, of course we have to water our gardens and trees and shrubs that are not well established.
The other day, I got this comment on my post from last December on Just Say No To Ice Cubes For Watering:
"Okay so I actually googled this exact topic "watering with ice" and am now quite discouraged. So all you expert gardeners out and especially May, how about some advice for a city dweller? I live in Baltimore, where the city is trying to increase the tree canopy, and have been enlisted to help water some newly planted trees near my children's school. It gets quite hot in the summer and we have had multiple summers of drought which makes tough conditions for baby trees. There is no near water supply. Just setting up the multiple hoses and getting the water turned on can take 30 minutes. I WAS hoping that dumping an entire store-sized bag of ice on the tree base in the early morning of a typical 90 + degree day would be an easy viable solution (and not torturem for me or the tree....). What do you think?"
I still think it is a bad idea to water plants with ice cubes, whether it is a poinsettia, a houseplant or a newly planted tree.
One bag of ice is not enough water for a tree on a hot summer day. What amount of water is that? A gallon or two, maybe three tops?
My advice to people on watering new trees is to water them thoroughly and deeply about once a week. You don't want to just give the trees some surface water, which will just evaporate away quickly in the hot sun and force tree roots up to the surface to find the water.
I prefer to lay a watering hose at the base of the tree and turn it on to just above a trickle and then leave it on for awhile until the area is good and soaked. I also sometimes use a Ross-type root feeder, without the fertilizer, for deep watering around newly planted trees and shrubs.
So my advice to "anonymous" in Baltimore who left this comment is to drag out those hoses and water those trees thoroughly once a week and use the ice for drinking.
What's your advice on watering those trees?
I won't have to water anything in my garden for quite awhile after this rain. It is one of those slow, steady, soaking-in kind of rains that brings out the greenest green colors in every plant in the garden.
Of course, I would prefer that this kind of rain not occur during a day when I am on vacation to garden, but I don't always get my preference. I'm a middle child, I'm used to that.
My preference would be to get one of these rains in July or August.
When it is not raining like this, of course we have to water our gardens and trees and shrubs that are not well established.
The other day, I got this comment on my post from last December on Just Say No To Ice Cubes For Watering:
"Okay so I actually googled this exact topic "watering with ice" and am now quite discouraged. So all you expert gardeners out and especially May, how about some advice for a city dweller? I live in Baltimore, where the city is trying to increase the tree canopy, and have been enlisted to help water some newly planted trees near my children's school. It gets quite hot in the summer and we have had multiple summers of drought which makes tough conditions for baby trees. There is no near water supply. Just setting up the multiple hoses and getting the water turned on can take 30 minutes. I WAS hoping that dumping an entire store-sized bag of ice on the tree base in the early morning of a typical 90 + degree day would be an easy viable solution (and not torturem for me or the tree....). What do you think?"
I still think it is a bad idea to water plants with ice cubes, whether it is a poinsettia, a houseplant or a newly planted tree.
One bag of ice is not enough water for a tree on a hot summer day. What amount of water is that? A gallon or two, maybe three tops?
My advice to people on watering new trees is to water them thoroughly and deeply about once a week. You don't want to just give the trees some surface water, which will just evaporate away quickly in the hot sun and force tree roots up to the surface to find the water.
I prefer to lay a watering hose at the base of the tree and turn it on to just above a trickle and then leave it on for awhile until the area is good and soaked. I also sometimes use a Ross-type root feeder, without the fertilizer, for deep watering around newly planted trees and shrubs.
So my advice to "anonymous" in Baltimore who left this comment is to drag out those hoses and water those trees thoroughly once a week and use the ice for drinking.
What's your advice on watering those trees?
Comments
Boy do I wish I had a big water storage system we are getting three days of rain.
Gail
Can send you the link if you want it...
I hope we have plenty of rain this summer and not another dry one. Like Gail, I too wish I had a way to collect the rain.
~ Monica
We planted a bunch of roadside trees some years ago. In a dry spell, I would fill a dozen milk jugs with water and give one or two to trees that looked as if they needed it. We didn't lose a single tree.
In the south, as long as you plant trees in October, and at no other time of year, they all seem to survive, no matter how dry the following summer.
Like you, we are getting a good soaking of rain right now, and I'm wondering when I will get to plant all these annuals I bought. Too bad we can't save some of this rain for later this summer.