How to Water Trees and Shrubs💦💧

welcome to heart tube my name is Jim Putnam in this video I'm going to talk about how and when to water trees and shrubs it's the middle of the summer now and I thought it'd be a good time to go over this I'm going to be talking about encore azalea specifically because I have some that have been in the ground for a couple years and some that have been in the ground for like a year and some that are very newly planted and I thought it'd be good to go over how I treat plants differently based on how long they've been in the ground I think that's an important component of you know how to water I also go over how to check and see if things need water what time of day I'm watering and the frequency with which I'm watering two very important things one is I have to assume that you've planted it properly okay planted the plant properly all of these azaleas and anything you see in my yard is mounted up just a little bit above the original grade so when you plant things try and you know try and make sure that you can still see the crown of the plant above the above the grade of the soil and the reason for that is when we're talking about watering plants I've actually seen more plants killed by loving them to death being over watered than under water if we raise them up like this we kind of take that away and and it would be very difficult for me to overwater anything in this yard based on the way that I had originally planted them so keep that in mind number two is we really need the ground mulched okay and I'm gonna show you an example of why right this second so this is a weeping cherry which is in a most bed right here and if I turn my water hose on it right here I've got a lot of pressure because I have an irrigation system that doesn't go through the pressure regulator but I want you to pay attention to that water around the base of this tree in this mulch area look what's happening the the mulch is not just great at retaining moisture it's also great at actually allowing the moisture into the ground it's but it's not allowing any runoff here look how much water I'm giving this tree and it's still taking it up the ground is still taking it up okay now let's move over here to a spot where I had dug out for a path that I haven't done yet and watch how the water is just running away you know that's the difference between a Moute space and own on motivation I'm in the Southeast United States and we get you know thunderstorms on and off throughout the summer and they're hitting this we can go two and three weeks at the time sometimes without rain and then you know and then be just drown you know every afternoon for a week that's typically how our rain goes here most of our older established plants can you know tolerate that two or three week gap in there it's not ideal but the plants uh you know survive it just fine without a lot of additional water obviously those of you who are in high desert or have seasonal rainfall meaning you get all your water in the wintertime and not in the summer no you know you have to water in the summertime you're definitely watering and you're probably best to put in some sort of drip system so it's on a timer and you know that you're watering those of us who have to kind of think about what you know watering where we where we get rainfall but we can have gaps in between it that's the main thing that I'm addressing in this in this video like I say older established plants the only time I'm giving them water is when they're in flower or when they're leafing out or if we've gone a long period of time where it's abnormally dry so you can probably see these uh white letting hydrangeas back here behind me this is the second season they've been in the ground back here as hydrangea paniculata is they're extremely drought tolerant I probably in general would not lose them in my area like I say where we get regular rainfall if I didn't water them but while they're in bloom like this and when they were coming into bloom I was definitely giving them some additional water so they put on this big performance it not only gives me more bigger better flowers it also makes them last a lot longer by keeping them moist so you know keep that in mind so this that's really older established plants I'm just giving them water when they're putting on their big shut up okay newer plants completely different what I'm doing on these is I'm going around I'm digging around the base of them with my finger an inch or so down I'm seeing if the soil is dry and if the soil is dry I'm dragging the water hose to it and I'm watering it just like I showed you with that weeping cherry over there I want to absolutely thoroughly saturate the space I don't want to sit here in water for 3 seconds and move to the next one to the next one because the very next day I'm gonna have to do the same thing I need the water thoroughly through the root ball let me show you a root ball so here's to encore azaleas and like most container shrubs in the United States they are grown in some sort of bark mix and the bark is used because it drains well it holds a little bit of moisture but it drains really really well and you know especially growing plants in the southeast where we're susceptible to hurricanes and tropical storms and like I say lots and lots of thunderstorms we have to have a meaty we have to have something in the container that drains pretty well it'll hold some moisture but like I say it drains well what that means for you when you're putting something in the ground is that the soil around where the where the roots are is you're putting it in the ground the water passes through it pretty easy passes through that column pretty easily here's a autumn sunburst Azalea that encore azalea that I haven't watered in a couple days on purpose and you can see this root ball here you know how porous this material is and how chunky the material is that's being used in these containers and this is typical of all you know container shrubs like I say every everywhere but you can see that's actually kind of hard to rewetting out like this it takes a couple times watering it to re-wet it or you have to really thoroughly you know saturate it here's one right here that I had water toward the end of yesterday and it's you know got a more consistent color and you know you can you can see there's no dry pockets or anything like that but you can see when you put something in the ground that's like this right here that's 12 inches deep 10 to 12 inches deep like that if you go and superficially water you know for three or four or five seconds there's no possibility that you're going to re-wet all of that dry bark so keep that in mind you really need to sit here and hold the water hose over this for an extended period of time and water it thoroughly and less frequently so this is three autumn Lily encore azaleas right here I'm going to go ahead and water these this is the second season that they've been in the ground last year I definitely watered them more consistently than I've watered them this year or check them more I don't know that I watered them anymore but I checked them a little bit more again I'm gonna put my finger you know down near the base of these things and get to the bottom of my mulch and see if it's moist or not if its moist I'm gonna I'm gonna leave them alone it hasn't rained here in several days and we've been in the mid to upper 90s so I'm gonna go ahead and water these and again I'm just gonna hold the water hose here you see how I'm watering over the top of that plant there's a lot of talk about you know not watering the foliage you're not watering the foliage and you know that's fine if we can avoid it you know let's put the hose down here if you can obviously that is better the main thing about the foliage staying wet is if the plants were crammed in here really really tightly that could be an issue where the where the where the leaves are continuing to stay wet you know between you know overnight and that kind of thing but if they're open like they are right now and it's during the day that foliage is gonna dry out fast enough that it's not going to cause a problem but you see how thoroughly I'm watering this I know that there's bark underneath the ground you know for that first year - and until it breaks breaks down in that and the and the roots really spread out in the soil now the other thing is the roots should be right out here to the edge of the plant and so keep that in mind it's not right here just in the center of the plant but it's the entire drip zone the drip zone is that you know out to the edges of the leaves okay hum when the water is another hotly debated thing and on frequently you'll see on you know people riding all the time the water in the morning water in the morning that's a great advice for watering turf okay because in your turf you have fatch down underneath the blades that can hold water in place and overnight you can end up with some some pretty serious problems on those on the shrubs like I say to have enough space around them that I just don't worry about them and guess when plants grow they grow at night and so I don't want them to go into the night of wilted and dry you know because I'm worried about whether or not to water them at 7 o'clock almost all the rain and summertime in the southeastern United States falls between 5:00 in the afternoon and 8:00 or 9:00 at night anyway so that's when they're getting water from the sky so it's no different than me doing it at that time so I water them when they need water that's the answer okay and I don't want them to go to sleep at night under drought stress because like I said that's when they do their growing that's when they're going to start opening flowers that's when they're gonna really put on you know build up they use the Sun that collect the sun's energy all day Colet carbon dioxide all day and then they assemble all those things at night okay you see how thoroughly I've watered these three plants while I've been talking I'm gonna move to the next one so here are two autumn fire encore azaleas and this is the second season that they've been in this space the this particular space is a little bit different than where those autumn lilies were over there there's autumn lilies are sitting out there in open space there's nothing around them there's nothing competing with them they've been able to you know I give them water when they need you know when they when they dried out for the last year and a half and and they've responded beautifully and grown quite a bit these autumn fires here have not grown as much partly because I haven't given them quite enough water because they're competing with this tree this oak tear has been in the ground for over 20 years and it's a it's very good at stealing nutrients if this is Elia and that tree had kind of grown up together they would be totally fine but when you're planting new plants into an established bed with an with an old tree know that you're going to have to give them additional water more water than you're gonna have to give other things again still mound them up though because the amount of water that I'm having to give them I don't want to end up like I say I don't want end up I don't end up drowning them just like anything else but again I'm coming over here I'm checking around the base I'm digging down you know an inch inch-and-a-half these are actually kind of moist they're not too bad but I'm just going to show you just breath I can't really overwater like I told you because I got to mound it up enough here but I saturate the area very very thoroughly the mulch is a little thinner here and so the water is running off some the area over there was absorbing it I need to re mulch this space if the air if the water is running away like that move to the next plant and water it until the water starts running away from it and then by the time you come back around after you do two or three plants the water will have soaked into the first one and so I'll hit this one two or three times if I'm if it's in a runoff situation like that the soils too compact or the mulch is too thin that kind of thing and I'll just go back and forth but I'm still going to end up somewhere in that 30 seconds you know in each plant with the amount of pressure I have when I'm planting new plants if let's say I was planting five or six plants here I'll actually get the first one in the ground and I'll bring the hose over to it and I'll barely turn it on like this and I'll lay it at the base of the one that I've already put in the ground while I plant the next one and so this one in this space is really being thoroughly saturated and then when I get the second one in the ground I'll move the hose over to it just like that these are some autumn lilac encore azaleas that I actually just put in this spring and they're in an elevated bed and so you know the fact they're newly planted this year and the fact that this soil is going to drain really really well better than anything else in my yard this is the something you have to think about that to give these some additional water you know especially in this in this first year again they're elevated even on this mound I left them up just a little bit above the grade and again this is the same thing I just built this little mound of soil up here and so it's very the soil still kind of loose and it's receptive to the to the water moving through it pretty easily so I don't I don't have a lot of runoff in this space but these these five again same thing I'm just watering them thoroughly we can water them from the bottom if you're concerned about it I could say during the day like this I just don't it doesn't bother me at all it's gonna the foliage is gonna dry off it's like the least of my concerns in the watering process is whether or not I'm getting the foliage wet if you can again stick the hose underneath it but they're gonna dry out pretty quickly the sun's just coming up over my house now okay container plants are another issue entirely I showed you how much that container mix can dry out and how thorough I mean just you can dry out so much that it's really kind of hard to rillette it and so any container mix is going to be like that once they get dry they're difficult to read so when you're watering any container and I'll set this kind of here in the middle so that you can see make sure that you're watering all the way around the container not just one spot you know down through the middle but whatever size your container is water it edge to edge all the way around whether it's a square whether it's a circle keep in mind the water is going to drop through that container mix almost straight down there's not gonna be a lot of wicking left or right in that in that container mix and so you need to make sure that you thoroughly wet or you gonna end up with dry pockets and it won't be roots in those dry pockets so that's pretty much how I address everything when I'm watering these autumn lilacs were newly planted this year and I'm checking them very frequently watering them thoroughly and infrequently that that's one of the keys we want to water them very deep and we want to let them dry out between we don't I've dug plants out of the ground two and three years after they've been planted on landscape jobs in the past and they hadn't rooted out at all because the person had just either been giving them a little bit of water at the time or they were planted up near the house and maybe the roof water was giving them too much water and they were planted too deep they just never root out so we want to water them we want to keep them in good shape but we want to deny them yeah enough to have them actually go out into the surrounding soil and root in and establish second year plants like those autumn lilies on the other side of the driveway I hadn't checked them in a week and it's been in the mid 90s but they were dry at that point and I watered them thoroughly they probably could have gone a little bit longer they weren't really showing any signs of drought stress once something's in the ground you know three or four years less and less water and and like I say the watering that I do at that point is typically going to be when they're leafing out in the spring when they're flowering when they're you know sometimes in the fall in our area in the southeast it can be really dry we're in hurricane alley but if we don't get one September and October actually two of our driest months so I'm actually I do think about watering in the fall as well as things are starting to to go dormant and that's that's pretty much it water thoroughly and infrequently make sure your plants aren't going to sleep at night in drought stress because that is when they put on their growth if you're concerned out keeping the foliage too wet or your plants were really crowded try to get underneath them in water from underneath otherwise with these well spaced plants like this watering during the day they're gonna dry out before the Sun Goes Down this evening and I'm just not that worried about that so thank you very much for watching this video and ask any questions you have that I may have missed in this video about watering trees and shrubs [Music]

Channel: HortTube with Jim Putnam

Views: 32,398

Rating: 4.9491835 out of 5

Keywords: How to water, watering plants, watering shrubs, watering trees, watering bushes, how to landscape, landscape maintenance, garden watering, when to water, how to irrigate plants, summer watering, fall watering, giving plants, water, encore azaleas, watering azaleas, checking plants for water

Id: u4cvblNPNiY

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019