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Garden Advice

How Much Water Does My Vegetable Garden Need?

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Good water management is one of the keys to good production. Over and under-watering can both be detrimental to your vegetable plants, and the symptoms may be surprising. For example, blossom end rot in tomatoes and peppers may actually be a symptom of too much or too little moisture. These plants will struggle to take up enough calcium under these conditions. So how much do you need to water your vegetable garden? This post will cover general guidelines and specific situations for ensuring your crops get what they need.

General Watering Guidelines

Generally speaking, most gardens require an average of 1 to 2 inches of water per week. This amount can come from rain or watering. Placing a few containers throughout your garden with 1 inch marked on them can help you see how much water your garden is getting while it’s raining or you’re running a sprinkler.

That said, you should always check your soil before making assumptions. In cool or very humid climates, you may need less water. You may need more in arid climates, hot periods, or with certain water-hungry crops. A tip for hot weather is that most gardens will need an extra 1/2 inch of water for every 10 degrees above 60°F.

When Should I Water?

You should aim to break up that 1 to 2 inches per week into at least three sessions throughout the week, depending on weather conditions. For best results, water in the early morning or evening when it’s cooler and less water will evaporate.

How to Tell If My Soil Is Moist Enough?

When checking your soil, dig down a couple of inches. The soil may be dry on top and very wet below. Mulch can help prevent the surface of the soil from drying and crusting. The opposite can be true after watering; just because the surface is wet doesn’t mean you’ve watered enough to soak into the bed.

Hand Test

You can grab a handful of soil (not just from the surface) and do a quick check. Squeeze the handful of soil and then open your hand. If the soil falls apart, it’s probably still too dry. If it mostly clumps together, you have enough moisture. If water dripped from your hand while you squeezed, you probably overwatered.

Moisture Meters

They’re not necessary for home gardeners, but if you need help with watering or want to get a bit more scientific about your approach, you can try a moisture meter. Many now provide moisture levels on a scale of 1 to 10, helping you quickly determine when to drag out the sprinkler.

Germinating Seeds

Seeds require consistent moisture to germinate properly. I recommend checking on your soil daily while seeds are germinating, depending on weather conditions. Remember that seeds planted deeply, like peas and beans, may dry out less quickly than tiny seeds, like carrots and lettuce planted close to the surface.

For some small seeds, use the board or cardboard trick to keep the soil moist. Using this method, you cover the bed with boards or cardboard to retain moisture. Carefully watch the bed and remove the cardboard when the seedlings sprout.

Person harvesting banana peppersCheck Plant Guidelines

If you have a water scarcity, focus your watering where it matters most. Some plants like tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, eggplants, and squash need a lot of water to produce well. On the other hand, crops like dent corn, amaranth, mustard greens, pole beans, and okra are generally fairly drought-tolerant once established.

You should also stop watering before harvesting some crops. For example, dent corn and dry beans don’t need water as they finish drying. You should also stop watering onions and garlic a week or two before harvesting.

How to Conserve Water

Folks living in arid areas or those with high water bills may find consistent watering to be more of a challenge. Mulching is one of the best ways to help hold moisture in the soil, and you can often find mulch material for free. Use glass clippings, straw, old leaves, or shredded paper around plants.

You can also start trying to catch and hold water on your property. Rain barrels make excellent additions to garden sheds or even gutters on your home. Some places may also allow you to use gray water from sinks, showers, and washers, but you’ll need to be very careful about the products you put down the drain. You can also take a permaculture approach and add swales to your property. Swales are essentially large ditches that catch rainwater uphill of your garden, slowly releasing it into the beds rather than letting it run quickly over the property.


Proper water management can help you have a more productive garden and save money and energy. Follow these guidelines to keep your soil moist, grow healthy plants, and conserve water in your vegetable garden.

Garden Advice

Garden Water Management

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Water may seem like one of the easiest elements of a garden to manage. Pulling out the sprinkler is undoubtedly easier than pulling weeds! Unfortunately, as many gardeners have discovered, water can cause a host of issues in the garden if you have too much or too little. Here are a few ways you can improve your garden to cope with water shortages and surpluses. 

Too Much Water

Erosion Control

Many gardeners lucky enough to call the Appalachians home have to cope with less than flat garden plots. Even with a slight slope, erosion can be a significant cause for concern.

Erosion damages garden soil by washing away organic matter and essential nutrients. It’s also damaging to local watersheds. When excess soil nutrients end up in streams, lakes, and rivers, they can cause algal blooms, which harm fish and other aquatic life. 

  1. Swales & Terraces


    For severe slopes or areas you know are prone to erosion, building contour swales or terraced beds may be worth the time and work invested.

    You can create terraced beds with a variety of materials, including boards, logs, or rocks. You want to create a wall that is parallel with the slope. Then you can flatten the soil behind it by raking it against the wall. This method is a great way to be able to grow annual crops on hillsides.

    Swales are essentially mounded beds with ditches behind them. Larger swales are typically built to follow the contour of a slope. Swales help prevent erosion and retain water. The water that collects in the ditch slowly seeps into the mound, providing moisture to plants over a longer period. You can learn more about building a swale of your own in our post, “Let’s Talk About Swales.”

  2. Cover Crops


    Another critical factor in preventing erosion is never leaving soil bare. Cover crops help prevent erosion because their roots help hold soil in place, and take up some moisture. Sow cover crops in pathways between beds, in areas not currently in production, and during the fall to keep your soil covered during the winter and spring. Learn more about which cover crops you should plant in this blog post.

Water-Logged Soils/Standing Water

Another issue common to the Southeastern US is heavy clay soils. These types of soils are prone to becoming water-logged during the spring rainy season. There are a few things so can do to combat this issue.

  1. Add Organic Matter


    Organic matter dramatically improves how your soil handles water. It soaks up water during rains and allows plants to access it slowly over time. The fastest way to add organic mater to your garden is to top dress your garden with several inches of well-aged compost.

    You can also add organic matter by using cover crops and mulch. Natural mulches like straw, leaves, grass clippings, and wood chips slowly break down adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil.

  2. Go No-Till


    Like adding organic matter, reducing the amount you till helps improve drainage and allows plants to access moisture over a longer time. Ditching the tiller keeps soil structure intact and reduces compaction, a major problem with clay soils.

  3. Raised Beds


    If you struggle with wet spring soils, you might consider building raised beds. You can create raised beds from scrap lumber, logs, rocks, and other cheap or free materials. They drain well and warm up quickly in the spring, helping you to get an early start. Keep in mind they also dry out faster during the hot summer months.

Too Little Water

Water Efficiently

Not all watering schedules are created equal! Watering in the cooler early morning or evening helps decrease the amount of water you lose to evaporation. You can further reduce evaporation by using drip irrigation or soaker hoses.If you often forget to turn off your watering system, consider purchasing a timer which will shut it off automatically. Alternatively you can set a kitchen timer or timer on your phone to remind you.

Mulch

Mulch helps keep soil cool and moist, reducing evaporation. You can use many cheap or free materials as mulch including cover crop residue, grass clippings, straw, leaves, and wood chips. 

Collect Rainwater

  1. Rain Barrels


    Rain barrels are an excellent asset for any backyard garden. You can add gutters to your home or garden shed and collect the water in a barrel to use for watering plants. Rain barrels don’t need to be fancy; cleaned trash barrels with holes drilled in the appropriate places will work if you don’t mind a DIY project.

  2. Swales


    As we mentioned above, you can also use contour swales to collect rainwater. The water fills the ditch behind the mound and slowly seeps into it, allowing plants to soak up the water over a longer time.

Choose Water-Wise Crops

If you have an area of your garden that is hard to water you may want to plant crops and flowers that don’t require much. These include native flowers like echinacea and food crops like flint and dent corns.

Whether you struggle with too much water or too little these strategies can help make your garden more productive. Proper water management is key to a healthy garden and a healthy local ecosystem.

Garden Advice

11 Ways to Make Your Garden More Eco-Friendly This Year

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Of course growing your own food is in itself environmentally friendly. Food from a backyard garden uses significantly less fossil fuels than produce from the grocery store. It’s not kept refrigerated for days or shipped halfway around the world. Garden gravel has been used for several years, but today is becoming even more popular.

It has many colors starting from grey, black, white, and even red. Larger stones are often incorporated into the landscape almost like statues. If designed properly, it can add much beauty to a yard or pathway.

There are many benefits of getting gravel during a garden. Gravel features a low maintenance. a touch raking or leveling bent make it even again is basically all it needs. the fabric may be a wonderful thanks to conserve water because it can act as a mulch. it’s a natural beauty which may depart the sweetness of the plants. Gravel is additionally an efficient thanks to cover irregularly shaped areas. Cost is inexpensive in comparison to paving or a lawn.

Gravel are often purchased in an array of shapes and colours from any nearby garden centre. It also has various types like pea-gravel, true gravel which is crushed stone, and stone clippings. the sort of gravel you opt to use will depend upon your location. Since it’s such a weighty material, most garden stores only get gravel that’s more locally available. You can also check here garden centres near me.

The plants which will grow well in gravel are many. You can know more about such plants and get more gardening tips on www.unclutterer.com. It’s usually recommended that you simply plant species that don’t shed leaves, as this may help to stay maintenance easy. It also looks quite pretty once you use plants that are a contrast to the stones used. you furthermore may must decide whether you would like the garden during a shady or sunny spot. However, these aren’t steadfast rules. many of us plant differing types of plants including vegetables.

You need to make a decision if the planning are going to be formal or informal. it’s usually best, especially if you’re just starting to incorporate gravel into your garden, to stay it simple. confirm you opt what you would like to be your focal points before you start . you furthermore may must decide what proportion gravel you would like within the landscape. the planning could be as small as having gravel during a potted plant, to having the entire garden covered with gravel. you furthermore may might plan to have a pathway made up of gravel.

Backyard gardens still have there own impact though. Through growing food humans are impacting the environment. It doesn’t have to be a bad impact though. You can make your garden a benefit for the environment and species around you.

Install a rain barrel.

If you live somewhere that they’re legal a rain barrel can be a great addition to your garden. You can use water that would otherwise run into the ground.

Grow a pollinator garden.

Pollinator’s numbers are dwindling. They’re losing habitat and being killed by pesticides. You can help make life a little easier on them and encourage them to pollinate your plants by planting a pollinator garden with our handy guide.

Make compost.

Composting is easy and not as smelly as you’d think. You also don’t have to purchase a fancy bin. You can do something simple like a bin made of pallets or even no bin at all. Mother Earth News has a great article on composting here.

Use natural garden amendments.

Even certified organic chemical fertilizers and amendments are far from perfect. Using them can lead to excessive nutrient run-off causing algae blooms in nearby creeks.  Natural fertilizers like compost, plant materials, and wood ash are better alternatives. Check out more options here.

Use grey water.

Grey water is water thats been used in your sink or shower. In some places it’s legal to route this water to your garden rather than your septic tank and use this water to water fruit trees and bushes.

Grow cover crops.

Cover crops add nutrients to the soil without the risk of over fertilizing. They also add habitat for beneficial insects and microbes and prevent soil erosion.

Make your garden water efficient.

There’s a variety of methods to do this including adding swales, berms, and terraces to hold water. It’s also good to use drip irrigation rather than overhead which can evaporate. If you are in Salem area, then get some help from lawn care services salem oregon guys and they will guide you to make your garden water efficient.

Go no-till.

Gardens don’t actually need to be tilled if they’re managed properly. No-till gardening is actually better for soil health and uses no fuel like running a rototiller would!

Add mulch.

I talk about mulch all the time but it’s super important. As far as keeping your garden as eco-friendly as possible, mulch helps to hold in moisture, lessening the need for watering and helps prevent soil erosion. It also adds habitat for beneficial insects.

 

Add habitats for pollinators and beneficial insects.

The addition of pollinator and beneficial insect habitats can be great for your garden and them. You can find a lot of free plans on the internet for houses for beneficial creatures like birds, bats, toads, and insects. Many birds also appreciate a variety of different height plants to land on in the garden while birds and beneficial insects will utilize plant material left standing through the winter.

Utilize permaculture principles.

An entire book would be needed to explain permaculture but many of its principles can be used to help design a garden that works with nature to produce harvests without the need for large water or nutrient inputs. If you want an eco-friendly garden researching permaculture can help get you there.

 

All of our actions impact the world around us. Backyard gardens minimize some of the negative impacts that are found in our current food system but as growers we can choose to take that a step further and make our gardens as eco-friendly as possible.