#12 Water first thing in the morning, or the evening.

A Manifesto for Growing Cut Flowers

Manifesto

#12 Water first thing in the morning or the evening.

Picking up on my manifesto for growing cut flowers, this last few months, there has been so much rain that I haven’t had to water at all, despite there being some days with no rain.

If you are new to my manifesto, there are other posts in the series -

1. Only grow what you love

2. First know what you love

3. Don’t start too early in the year

4. But start the year before

5. Make your own composts (or buy peat free)

Since writing making this set of rules, I have changed my soil and mulch practise. The manifesto needs revising and #6 editing. Funny what happens when you commit to a list but that’s growing innit?

7. Make your own liquid feeds

Today is #12. Watering.

The main point is not to water during the day. But there is, naturally, a lot more to this than just that!

The first rule of watering club is:

not to water

My garden would be a lot more floriferous if I did water, but I don’t. I rarely water.

To be clear, vegetables do need watering at particular times, but then I grow them pretty hard too. But for the purpose of this piece, i’m mostly concerned with flowers.

Two reasons, I don’t want to stand about watering but also, mainly, because plants are a lot stronger if you don’t.

So what do I water?

1. Plants inside the polytunnel.

   Right now, that is two troughs of sweet peas and a lot of tomatoes planted into the ground. I water these at least every other day, often every day. It takes 6x10L watering cans. I fill them up the day before, (harmful to microbes, chlorine breaks down in sunlight) then water in the morning.¹

   In the spring, that was ranunculus in there and orlaya. I’d water every few days. I didn’t water the poppies, they like it dry.

2. Seedlings in trays or pots

   These will invariably be watered with watering cans, as above every morning, but only if dried out between waterings.

3. Any really precious plants that look like they need it before they flower, or as they flower. So far, none this year.

4. Pots

   I empty florist buckets or trays of water, filled with rainwater into these.

5. Bags of late autumn chrysanthemums

   But I often forget, so they’ve been water about 3 times so far.

6. The Compost heap

   When building it or turning.

I do run a regime of benign neglect but the more I am ‘hands off’ the better the garden works together.

Morning is best

• It’s counterintuitive, but research has discovered that plants take up water better in the morning, and will continue to do so during the daytime.

• At night time, with moist soil for hours, there is more chance of slug and snail damage and furthermore, fungal diseases.

• During the morning, the plants are rested and the soil is cool, water can be absorbed much more easily.

Wisdom behind not watering

You see, time it right, plant out seedings when they want to grow away, searching for water and extending their roots deeply to anchor. Cultivate soil that is rich with microbial activity, feeding the fungi so it too goes deep, for ground water to bring up to the plants. Sometimes metres. In parts of the rainforest, the networks are kilometres long!

It all comes back to the soil, as everything does. Care for that, first and it’ll care for the rest. When I first gardened in the walled garden, the soil was so dry and, well, dead. Since then, firstly with compost and mulching (which, as I said, I no longer do and if I knew what I knew, probably never would have) but now using my own composts to grow plants and green manures to nurture the soils, the last few years, I have watered less and less, yet my plants seem to thrive more and more. This goes against much of what I learnt and I thought.

When planting out seedlings, I aim to water well the evening before, and ideally plant on a damp day, or with cloud cover. I then don’t water until I see fresh new growth on the plants. If it rains around that point, then I don’t bother at all!

I replanted my dahlias in late May, moving them from the Walled Garden to the Braybrooke Garden. Yes, I lost some to slugs and just rotting due to the shock I think. But watering would have made no difference to their success. I don’t water dahlias until they are at least 5” tall anyway, and since any of mine have reached that, it has rained heavily pretty regularly since then. Yes sure, I have reports of people having flowers already but I think it’s a big ask for a plant to flower for over 3 months, I prefer to allow them to grow naturally with little intervention from me to help plants be resilient to their environment, to make friends with the soil bacterias and fungi and get on with it. So far, none have aphids (but there are a few sacrificial nasturtiums about). I aim for strong plants which will flower strongly into August, September and to the first frosts.

See it the other way around, if you water a lot, I mean more than once a week, your plants are, with respect, a ‘weak lemon drink’.²

These plants do not put their roots down deep, they rely and expect water to come easily. Without strong roots, the plants are also less strong, needing support. And I reckon, less resilient, more likely to attract pests and disease, and fungal problems with moist soil and air.

Planting up gardens with plants appropriate to our soils and local weather, creating resilient spaces full of biodiversity and a light human touch, is regenerative gardening.

1. Mostly, I use water from the garden tap but we do have some waterbutts. Not enough. It’s a winter project to put gutters up and collect water off the outdoor kitchen lean-to.

2. This is a real put down in our family. Someone or something that is needy, weak, reliant. It came from this sketch.