How to Water a Garden: Next Level Watering Techniques

It’s hard to have a thriving garden without watering, especially when summer days turn very dry and very hot outside. But did you know that how you water makes a difference?!

There is more to it than just knowing if it is better to water in the morning or during the day. It may seem elementary, but the watering techniques you use in the garden can greatly improve or impair the health, vitality, and yield of a garden! 

It’s time we look into how to water a garden. From tomatoes to flowers to root crops, the simple watering tips I am sharing will save you loads of time and trouble. 

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Making a Splash in the Garden

Learning new techniques in the garden can be difficult. You might feel overwhelmed with information at times, like a never-ending laundry list in your head. However, mastering a few foundational skills will save you from facing a world of other garden problems! 

Watering is one of those essential foundational techniques. After you finish learning how to water your garden, take some time to learn the best time to water plants and the best water for plants.

How to Water a Garden

Let’s talk about some common methods for watering a garden and the pros and cons of each. Some methods you may have tried, and some may be new to you:

• Watering with Irrigation Hoses

• Deep Watering

• Spot Watering

• Fertigating

• Day Watering

• Watering with Overhead Sprinklers

• Watering By Hand

Using Irrigation Hoses to Water

Setting up an irrigation system for your garden is the best way to save money on your water bill. By using irrigation hoses, you can direct water to exactly where it should go. 

This system also allows you to time the watering process to avoid overwatering and underwatering. Too much water can invite pests and diseases and is a top killer of garden plants, but too little water will lead to stressed plants and low yields. 

Check your soil moisture by poking two inches down into the soil with your finger. If the soil is completely dry, it's time to water! If the soil is still wet an inch down, wait a little bit longer. Watering deeper than two inches of soil is called "deep watering." 

Deep Watering

The deep watering method creates better root development for your plants. If you want to grow amazing carrots and other root crops, this is the method for you! It also helps larger plants with deeper root systems receive the nutrients they need. 

When you irrigate your crops with deep watering, make sure that you give them a really good soaking. How long you soak is dictated by the soil type because looser soil will allow the water to move through faster. Then, let the soil dry out down to three inches or lower in between waterings.

This will actually help your plants become more drought resistant because the roots are incentivized to go deep down into the soil to find water. By deep watering, you’re going to have better root development, more uniform root crops, and probably need to water less often.

Spot Watering

Spot watering is the act of watering the soil directly where the plant is that needs water and nowhere else. 

The benefit to doing this is that you conserve water and reduce weed pressure. Watering at the base of the plant also helps prevent diseases like blight and powdery mildew because there is not as much splash up on the leaves. 

You can do this watering method with drip irrigation very effectively, but you can also spot water with a hose or a watering can (although using a hose or watering can can take a long time depending on how many plants you have to water).

Fertigating

Fertigating is the watering technique when you fertilize and water at the same time, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. There are several ways to fertigate:

• Foliar Feeding - When you take nutrients, dissolve them in water, and apply that mixture onto the foliage of crops, that is called foliar feeding. I like to apply seaweed fertilizer as a foliar feed because plants can uptake those nutrients through their leaves.

• Root Drench - A root drench is exactly what the name implies and it is great for supercharging the root system. Compost tea makes a great, fast-acting root drench.

• Irrigating With Fertilizer - Simply mix a water-soluble fertilizer into your water before watering as you normally would. Pro-Tip: I absolutely love using the EZ FLO fertilizer injector to fertigate our garden. You can use the EZ-FLO to get fertilizer right in the water stream when using drip irrigation, a sprinkler system, or even a hose nozzle.

Day Watering

You may already know that I don’t recommend day watering because of the fact that during the day, water can heat up in the soil and damage roots and soil microbes. That’s why the best time to water plants is typically in the morning or evening, avoiding the heat of the day. 

However, sometimes you have to water during the day and it's important to know how to do that safely. (Day watering is one surprising method for getting rid of earwigs in the garden!)

When it's hot out, you cannot water quickly and you should avoid getting water on the leaves and fruits of your plants! When you water too fast, the very hot top soil will heat up the water and carry that heated water down to the roots, shocking and damaging them.

You first want to cool down the surface soil by watering very slowly, only dampening the top one inch of soil. After you have dampened and cooled the top one inch of soil, you can continue watering slowly until the soil is saturated.

Day watering with this method will protect the critical rhizosphere, which is the soil zone 2 to 5 inches below the surface that is home to beneficial soil bacteria, soil fungi, and plant roots. Remember, being patient and slow is the way to go.

Watering With Overhead Sprinklers

Rainfall will inevitably water your plants from above, but that doesn't mean you should. Moisture on the foliage of plants can increase the risk of fungal diseases like powdery mildew.

Overhead watering is rarely necessary but affects some varieties less negatively than others. Onions, for example, don't face issues with above watering because their leaves are tall, sleek, and don't retain moisture. Cool-weather crops like peas and leafy greens are also more tolerant to water from above. Other varieties may be very negatively affected by the above watering. 

Watering As Pest Control

One of the few situations where watering foliage can be helpful is when pests are detected. Now, this does not work on every pest, but it can be effective on soft-bodied plant-sucking pests like aphids.

Mid-summer is not the time you want to use anything harsh in your garden, even organic pesticides if you can avoid it. In an organic garden, the first approach should be the least invasive and least aggressive. 

Instead of immediately turning to pesticides, use high-pressure water (not so high-pressured that it will damage the leaves) to blast those bugs off the plant. If you can, do this in the morning to give the leaves plenty of time to dry completely.

Watering By Hand 

Sometimes taking time to water your garden by hand will feel time-consuming. However, it's a wonderful way to feel connected to your garden and give yourself time to relax at the beginning or end of your day! 

When watering by hand, use a hose nozzle on the shower or soaker setting and water near the base of each plant. If you don’t have a hose nozzle with different settings, watch the fun video above to learn how to use different finger positions on a hose to replicate hose nozzle settings. 

After all, what’s life without a little bit of fun!