It's a beautiful summer morning and
I want to show you some watering options for seedlings
From sowing stage to small plant for then planting out mostly and containers, too
so this is my propagating bench, which
Even in summer is full. We're raising plants all year round to keep the garden full planting out as crops finish
so there's seedlings always at different stages of growth and
They need different amounts of water. So generally when you've got a full tray like these lettuce
Which are only 20 days old actually from sowing
They need more water than these recently sown and pricked out
flower and
Coriander and dill seedlings. So you just need to bear that in mind when you're watering and
Then how often you do. It depends on the weather. So at the moment, it's really warm
Unusually for us and I'm watering twice a day
Whereas normally I water once a day and I find it works best to water in the morning
so that means that there's
All the water has evaporated by evening it in our climate. That's an advantage because then you get less mildew less slugs
For example, but if you're in a hot climate
I can see the sense of watering in the evening maybe as well as watering in the morning
So you need to kind of work that out according to where you are
There's a lot about watering. That's I
Think not not always properly worked out like I've seen this often recommended that when you're watering seedlings you turn the rows upside down
so that what it comes out like that and
the reason I see given is that then the force of water is less powerful on the leaves which
Doesn't risk damaging them. I
Find however
two things one is that
Leaves are actually pretty sturdy and a little bit of water force on them as it falls
Is good because that that toughen them up for real life out there
And you get a stronger seedling?
light was actually just doing that over your seedlings helps them to it it just
strengthens, their whatever is in the leaf that that makes them sturdy and
Then the other thing about watering with the Rose downwards is that you get a more
precise
application of water so I'm just gonna water all these
Seedling trays now. This is how I do it every morning and sometimes in the afternoon when it's really hot
And you can see that with because the Rose is actually a fine rose. That part is important
You want to find rose that is giving lots of small little sprays of water
and that certainly wasn't hurting the plants and then where I've got a couple of trays like this of these French beans that we're
Planting out probably tomorrow so that they're up there final stage of growing in the tray. They are using a lot of water
So I'll just give them a second little water to make sure that those little modules
have enough moisture
And as you just noticed this morning, I'm for various reasons
I missed it yesterday afternoon
And you can see what happens if you if your seedlings don't have enough water at some stage you get this crisping on the leaf
so this is this is caused by a moisture stress in the hot Sun yesterday afternoon and
Oh
It's not brilliant. It's nothing that's gonna
Long-term damage the plants. It was it's the way the plant responds to not having enough moisture at the roots
It'll just sacrifice a small amount of leaf
So you quite often see that on say vigorously growing tomatoes and cucumbers as well French beans outside
moisture demanding plants that just hit a a moment in the day when there's not enough moisture for them and that's the
method of getting around it and
With containers
With these module trays and I should have mentioned that there's I've got nothing underneath except the wooden bench
You can see incidentally that's not wet even after the watering. So
These containers are not saturated. They're they're feeling Hevy that's a very good way of checking
Moisture contents to lift your trays and if they feel reasonably heavy then that's good
You don't actually want them to be totally saturated the whole time
It's better that you know roots need some air. So it's the same for containers and lifting them that one feels pretty heavy
That feels a bit less heavy even though I've got a
Saucer underneath a saucer obviously a good way of trapping the water before it all runs away for a long longer term
Not having to waters so much
But because this is a much bigger plan than that one. This is obviously pumping out more water
I've been watching them roughly the same this one feels lighter, so I'll give it a bit more water and then
Here there is a lovely tomato plant
Which I've watered to pretty much capacity yesterday
Morning that and there was water sitting in the saucer and it was feeling really heavy and now I'm noticing it
It's already in one one day feeling quite light. So
most of the water that the compost in this pot can hold
Was used by this plant in one day just because out of this relatively small container for the size of plant. There's a
Limited amount of water can be stored in there. So that's where in terms of watering. It's good to look at
How much compost you can give to a big plant like this and why ultimately they're better in a big pot
It's always better to start plants in a smaller pot because what you don't want is small plants
surrounded by masses of water in soggy compost in a big pot
So you could still at this stage of life tap this one out and put it into a bigger container if you wanted to
Do that. Otherwise you just need to keep on top of the watering
And this by the way is variety called crap optica, which is a fantastic bush tomato
So no pruning needed at any surgery. It just shoots out in all directions and you can pick fruit off it as and when
yeah, that's helped you to see some options and work it out and
Adapt your watering to the weather and to where you are
climate wise
You