When watering your plants during summer, you should keep in mind these 5 tips to make the job easier and, of course, more effective.
1. Mulch, mulch, mulch!
Don’t ever forget how important it is to cover your soil if you want to keep your crops hydrated. You can use straw, leaves, shredded paper or cardboard, coconut-fiber husks, or coco-bean mulch for this purpose. That way, you will manage to moderate the temperature, hold moisture in the soil for longer periods between watering, and prevent evaporation.
2. Water deeply
The second rule would be to always water deeply. If you water your plants frequently, but not deeply enough, you won’t get far. It is always better to go for less frequent, but deep watering. This will help you to keep your plant roots stronger and healthier. If you’re not sure whether it’s time to water, you can check this quite easily – just push your finger into the soil and if you find it moist a knuckle or two deep, you can leave it like that for a little longer. If not, soak the soil, making sure the water gets to the roots.
3. Use drip irrigation and an automatic timer
Another useful piece of advice is to use drip lines so as to enable slow and effective irrigation. Namely, large amounts of water are likely to only run off the surface and never get to deeper layers, and, of course, you don’t want that to happen. That’s when drip lines can come in handy. You can find them at nurseries and home centers. You can also use automatic timers which can be set for automatic, daily or regular watering cycles.
4. Mix water-absorbing materials into your soil
Do know that you can always use some organic materials such as coconut coir, peat moss, leaf mold or even plain old compost to increase the water-absorbing potential of your soil. Any of these will help retain the moisture, which will help your plant during dry spells. Water-absorbing polymer crystals such as Terra-Sorb, Hidrogel, Soil Moist, Aquasorb or Zeba can also be quite useful.
5. Try a self-watering container
If you want to make sure that your plant is well-watered for a couple of days, you can use self-watering containers, which have a water reservoir at the bottom of the container. As you can guess, the water in the reservoir can last for a longer period of time during cool days, but during summer, make sure you check it more often.
We hope these tips will help you keep your plants hydrated and healthy.
