Problems caused by incorrect watering
Although irrigation can
really boost the yield of your garden, watering the wrong way can do
more harm than good. Here are a few problems caused by improper
watering:
- Frequent shallow watering tempts plants to keep all of their roots close to the soil surface. When you forget to water for a few days, your plants shrivel up and die. Instead, you should water deeply (about an inch of water at a time) once a week to promote the growth of deep roots.
- Sprinkler irrigation in the evening can promote the growth of fungi, especially in sensitive plants like tomatoes. For these plants, water first thing in the morning on a sunny day so that their leaves can dry off quickly, or use drip irrigation.
Rapid watering with a hose can cause soil crust formation in clayey
soils, especially if you tilled your soil too fine or during droughty
conditions. A soil crust forms when tiny soil particles are
washed into the air pores between larger soil particles, forming a
soild mass which prevents further water from soaking into the
soil. To prevent crusting, water clay soil lightly and use
no-till techniques. This
USDA factsheet (from which I got the photo) gives a lot more
information about soil crusting.
| This post is part of our Irrigation lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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