- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden. In this video, I'm gonna show you
nine ways to water your garden that will save you a ton of time and effort, especially in
the long run. We all know how important water is for plants but especially at this time
of year not only are we trying to promote the germination of seeds and the development
of seedlings, but because of the warmer temperatures we're trying to reduce the stress that the
plants experience, as in, we don't want them to run to seed too early. But fortunately
for us gardeners there's a load of things that we can do to make our watering more efficient
and impactful. The first thing that you can do is one of my favorites and I find myself
doing it more and more, and that's about timing your transplanting or your direct sowing with
the rain. So if you live in a wetter climate, like here, what you can do is either sow or
transplant your seedlings either straight after some heavy rain or just before some
heavy rain, or if you're feeling a little brave like I did with this brassica seed bed,
It was tipping it down with rain. And I went ahead and I direct sowed all of these seeds
and it meant I didn't have to water them because Mother Nature was doing it for me. And this
is a result of sowing things in the rain. So just by timing it with the weather, it
means it can save you a bit of time with having to water them in afterwards, because if the
soil is saturated or is going to be saturated, then you can get on with some other things.
The second tip is also related to timing, and that's about when should we water our
plants? And the best time is as early as you possibly can in the morning. When the sun
then starts to rise up to midday that's when there's a lot of evaporation, so if you water
as early as possible, it gives more time for the water to seep down into the ground rather
than being evaporated by the sun. Now about two or three years ago, I was watching one
of Charles Dowding's videos and he was using something like a barrel to fill the watering
can, just like you saw at the start of this video. And this is such a useful way of making
your watering more efficient because instead of waiting for your can to fill up, what you
do is you just dunk them in, get on with watering. And what we have is a pipe here that runs
to our IBC tank water storage system. So after we've kind of half used this, I'll just stick
the pipe in, turn on the IBC tank and it'll just fill up naturally. And that means I'm
saving so much time not waiting around for these watching cans to fill up using a tap.
The third tip is to actually look at the way that you grow food. In my last video, I talked
about how no dig reduces the need to weed, but no dig also promotes a healthy soil structure.
So what you do, is by not disturbing the soil, you're not gonna be compacting it, and you're
allowing it to kind of create this fluffy, almost sponge-like structure, which makes
it, firstly, a lot easier for the water to go down into the ground, because when it's
away from the surface it's not going to evaporate, but equally as important, it makes it easier
for the plants to send down deeper roots, which allows them to reach more water, and
that means that you're gonna have more resilient plants if you have something like a short-term
drought. One of the most important things to create a healthy seedling is to have a
healthy root system because that means it's going to do better at taking up nutrients
and water. And to do that, it's about encouraging your seedlings instead of watering from the
top, encourage them to have water from the base because if the water is traveling up,
it's going to encourage the roots to go downwards. And the other thing is, it takes a bit of
time hand watering seedlings, and it isn't very effective. So what I do is I have a few
of these trays. I fill them with about an inch or two and a half centimeters of water,
and I pop these in, these are some beetroots, And then my dad has sown a load of really
nice looking sweet corn. I put these in like this, put a timer on my phone for 15 minutes,
come back, swap these out, pour a little bit more water in, and put in some more seed trays.
And it's just a really easy, no fuss way as you're doing your gardening business to get
your seedlings watered the right way to encourage a really healthy root system, which means
you're gonna get really good plants as a result. Even though it's June, there's still plenty
of sowing to do. I love trying to sow as much as possible until the very end of the growing
season. I'm just putting in a row of radish here and it leads into the next tip, which
is if you're sowing anything from seeds, whether it's in modules or whether you're direct sowing
it, then if you protect them or cover them with something like a plank for direct sown
seeds or a bit of cardboard for module sowings, it prevents evaporation which stops it from
drying out. It's going to improve the germination rates of those seeds. And it's gonna save
your time having to water. So what I can do here is I can sow these radish, cover over,
wait for a rainstorm. And then after the rainstorm, I just put this plank over and then I'll check
underneath it every few days. As soon as I see those first signs of seedlings, I take
it off. And that's a really easy way to both reduce stress and also to reduce the time
needed to water. When you have younger seedlings in your beds, it makes sense to go in with
a watering can and just water over the top. But when you get more developed plants, for
example, these potatoes, if you water over the top using something like a rose, then
you're not getting very efficient watering because the water is just repelling off the
leaves, falling into the pathways. It's not going where you want it. You want it to go
to the roots. So instead of watering over the top, what you want to do is water as close
to the base as possible, just to increase the efficiency. And any mature plant that
you have in the garden, just water as close as possible. And it's gonna mean that the
time you do spend watering is gonna be a lot more impactful. If you're growing the kind
of plants, which are usually stand-alone ones, these are the things like your courgettes,
your aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, one thing that you can do to really help make the watching
more efficient is as you're transplanting them, create a bowl shape. So create a dip
around the stem and what this creates is this kind of collection vessel. So when you water
low down by the ground, the water collects and it gradually seeps in and down towards
the root system. The issue with say a flat surface is if you put on a load of water,
it can just go and disperse in all sorts of directions. So by creating a bowl, you're
concentrating the efforts of your watering, and as a result, your watering is gonna have
a lot more efficiency and positive impact. The final tip is actually, how do I know that
something in the ground needs watering? These are small seedlings here. And so for small
seedlings, I put my finger around an inch or two and a half centimeters, and if I can't
detect any moisture, then I need to give these a bit of a water. Now, if you have more developed
plants, for example, these potatoes behind me or the peas behind me, I put my finger
in two inches, and if I can't feel any moisture in the first two inches, or five centimeters,
then that is a good signal that they need a soaking. However, if I do, they're gonna
be okay. Those are nine tips to help make your watering in the garden more efficient.
Now, even though I do enjoy the process of watering, wherever possible, I do try and
save time to just enjoy spending some peace and quiet here in the vegetable garden. If
you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave them down below in the comments.
And I look forward to seeing you guys again soon.