If you like science like us, keep reading, but if you’re more interested in skipping to the watering tips, scroll down!

Water is vital to the life of a plant. Transpiration is the movement of water through a plant. Similarly to humans, plants are made up of 70% or more of water. How they store the water is entirely up to the species of plant, where its located, and how it has co-evolved with planet earth over the past 4.54 billion years.

Scientific nomenclature aside, plants need water! When plants are young, they need it more often. Whether you just planted native or non-native plants, young plants already have shorter and less robust root systems. This is why many native plant nurseries are switching to longer pots and why we chose bare root plants. They are inherently stronger and can take up more nutrients and water when their roots are longer.

We want to build strong roots systems that will not need consistent watering, especially during heat waves, and especially now that our summers do not include reliable rain. We encourage you to adopt a different way of watering and continue to learn more about how your plants are already becoming the drought tolerant work horses they got their reputation for.

Heres where to start:

*NOTE* We are mainly referring to small young plants in this scenario, but larger trees or pots going through their establishment period (years 0-3) need a similar approach during the summer.

• Water early morning or around sunset (if you can). This prevents losing water to evaporation before the plant can effectively absorb and utilize the water.
• Water the roots not the leaves. This helps prevent powdery mildew. If you have dense planting or the leaves stay wet for too long, this can encourage disease or pests.
• Water every few days rather than every day. If you find that you need to water twice a day, consider the following:
  • Do you have mulch? If not, water can evaporate much faster when the soil is bare.
  • Are you watering deeply enough? You may have hydrophobic soil (it can’t absorb water), this means you may need to soak the soil longer when you start to space out your watering schedule.
• Spacing time between watering helps encourage your young plants to build strong, long root systems. This builds plants that become more resilient when extreme weather happens. Extend the time you water even further the longer the plant has been in the ground. Ultimately, you are not watering more than once a week during dry spells.

Watering too often can create leggy plants that are more vulnerable to extreme changes. Let’s face it, the reality of plant care is we all want something more low maintenance, but it starts with changing your watering habits.

Some people say it doesn’t matter when you water as long as you water. This is mostly true, but the important knowledge to walk away with is how often and how long you water. Of course, it’ll be easier to extend time between watering when you aim for the early morning or evening, but you can’t fix shallow watering. You can water during the “ideal time” and it might still not be enough.

So save yourself the time and plants that keep dying. Make some of these tweaks to help your new plants survive our longer and hotter summers. If you haven’t already started selecting drought tolerant natives – check out our favorite full sun native drought tolerant plants in our upcoming blog post!