It is crucial to water your plants in your pots properly to have the plants perform at their best. Once you get more experience on understating when and how much to water, it will become easy just by the snap of your fingers. However, if you are a starter in planting, watering could be a mess and frustration. Generally, the most common cause of a plant\’s early death is the over-watering. Here are simple guidelines that you can follow on how to water your plants the right way.
- Make sure there are drainage holes in the bottom of the pot if you are planning to do planting in a pot. It is essential to have a proper drainage for a plant pot, so the plant will grow with happy roots. You can easily over-water your plants if your plant pot does not have proper drainage.
- Check to see if your plants need water rather than watering on a schedule. Check the surface of the soil in the pot either by touching it with your finger or by looking it. The soil will be dark if it\’s wet while dry soil will be lighter in color. For the common type of peat based soil mixes, dark brown to black is wet and the “paper bag” color is dry. Water your plants if the surface of the soil is dry to touch. You can check your plants twice a day to see if they need to be watered. It doesn\’t mean that if one\’s pot needs to be watered, the other pots need to. How quickly a pot dries out depends on the differences in a plant sizes and pot. Always check beforehand.
- When watering the plant, be sure to moisten the entire root zone, or water until the water comes out of the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot. It may take as much as ¾ or a gallon of water. Plants that usually receive a cup of water may seldom develop roots in the bottom 2/3\’s of the container. The plants wilts and easily could be lost due to dehydration when their daily cup of water is not available.
- Avoid watering your plants at night. The plant\’s foliage will tend to stay wet all night if you water your plants too late in the day. The wet foliage at night could become a breeding ground for plant disease. You should be able to wait to water your plants in the morning if your plant is not wilting and it\’s after 6.30 at night. However, if the plant has wilted that evening, you need to water it to outweigh the chances of catching a disease.
- Use larger pots if you want to water less often. Bigger pots hold more soil volume. So there will be more water held in the pot with more soil volume. You will need less watering because there is still water in the pot. You can add additives to the soil to help it retain more moisture. This can be very helpful in the long dry summers. In case you do incorporate the additives into the soil, you should be careful not to overwater your plants in the spring when the pots are drying out less quickly.
Additional Reading:
http://www.provenwinners.com/garden/articles.cfm?contentID=59
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