does watering weaken roots?

[Annpan]

Just heard that watering too often can result in weak roots... is this true?

I thought that when it was sunny I should water to encourage things to grow quicker and I thought my carrots would suffer if it had been dry for too long and then a sudden rainfall would cause them to spilt.

[MKG]

Yeah - give 'em a good drink after a drought and the ingrates split. Don't water enough and they curl up and die. Use water which is too cold and they revert and think it's March. Overwater and they drown. Who'd grow 'em, eh?

But one thing's for sure. If you make it just a bit too easy for them (as in water them regularly whether they need it or not), they, in common with any other organism, will get lazy. They won't send out long, searching roots unless they have to - so it isn't a case of weak roots but rather one of unnecessary roots. Reminds me of the unswollen radishes.

Make the lazy sods do a little bit of work.

[ina]

Which is also why it's better to water rarely, but heavily; that gives the water the chance to sink down, and then the roots will have to grow after them, rather than spread out sideways because the water is always only in the top layer of soil.

[red]

so the flash flood we just had ( who asked for rain eh Ann!!) will have done my carrots nothing but good then..... she says hopefully....

[MINESAPINT]

I posted recently after I had put a sprinkler on my garden principally to water a newly sown grass path. Half of my broad bean bed was also catching some water and I thought this would do no harm! After a few days it became clear the beans that received the water were falling behind the ones that rceived no water. Conclusion is that what the beans were wanting at that time was nice warm sunshine not "cold water shock".

This was about 1 month ago and there is still a noticeable difference between the different ends of the bed although all are looking pretty healthy.

My wifes uncle who also lives in North Yorkshire is adamant that plants should be left to get on with it. He has been a keen gardener for donkeys years and has never watered anything.

All plants obviously require a balance of moisture, warmth and nutrients and when plants are not thriving as you think they should be it is a question of deciding which is lacking and not necessarily reaching for the watering can.

One lesson I have learned is not to use freezing cold water straight from the tap. Water warmed in containers in the sun or the greenhouse is obviously much better.

MINESAPINT

[Annpan]

MINESAPINT just answered my follow up question, I htink.

I was thinking that maybe you should hold off watering ornamental plants, trees, shrubs, perennials, etc... but surley with the likes of lettuce/peas onions, etc you don't really care if they have strong roots - you just want the tops to grow quick as possible but obviously those broad beans suffered... I wonder if that was down to continuous watering (ie all day) or cold watering?

What is the guide to how much you ought to water a veg garden then - baring in mind that we have just had near 6 weeks with very little rain. I watered every 3 days or so (sometimes everyday, sometimes not for 4 or 5 days) I reckoned it was no worse than them being rained on periodically



Thanks
Confused in Lanarkshire

[andyt]

hello confused,
water retension depends on yer soil type.
when in doubt about watering,stick yer hands in the soil & see how damp[cold] or dry [warm] it feels.
"pumpy"

[Enormous Sage]

I found this out the hard way last year. I guess if there's a lack of water, the roots grow stronger to "find" it.

I've not got much choice this year as the rain is doing all the watering for me. The only thing that seems to be thriving is the pea plants.

[James Lang]

Hi All
I have also seen a load of root damage on some cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli
These were bought from a garden centre at the start of May. They were an OK size with a decent root ball. I planted them out a couple of days after I bought them and all seemed well. But now half the seedlings have shrivelled and died. I pulled a few from the ground and the roots were almost gone. I don’t know the soil PH level but the soil it is quite clayish (Is that a word). This is my first year planting and at the start of the year I added a few bags of horticultural sand and 400tlr of soil improver (B&Q own brand) to help the soil out.
Anyway my question is could it be the excessive rain the last two weeks that have caused this or is there something more sinister in the ground having a munch on the roots?
Are there know insects etc that live in soil and eat away roots?
What signs should I be looking for, I put down slug/snail pellets to see if that caught anything but nothing showed up.

I have other seedlings in the same vicinity and they don’t seem affected.

Thanks in advance


James

[Annpan]

could that be club root? I have never had it myself but it affects brassicas (brocolli, cauliflower and turnip/swede) I found a tip that said to put a piece of rhubarb it the hole before planting the seedling... worked for me, so far.

[Enormous Sage]

I had the same problem with brassicas - all the roots just vanished after the bad weather last year and anything that survived got eaten by slugs, birds and catepillars.

I think watering is a fine art.... which I am a long way from perfecting.

[Millymollymandy]

The best way to check if you need to water or not is to take a trowel and have a dig in the soil and see for yourself just how moist or dry it is under the surface! Water newly sown seed and seedlings every day in dry weather if the surface of your soil looks dry because you need those seeds to stay moist and germinate and when they have germinated, just go by what the soil looks like (dry or not) and start reducing the watering to every other day until the plants get big enough to have sent some roots down.

Onions have shallow roots whilst leeks have amazingly deep ones in comparison, so water your onions more than your leeks. Water lettuce more often than most other veg because it is shallow rooted and tends to bolt quicker when the weather is hot or dry.

I think it just takes some getting used to both your soil and the different plants and how big their root systems get. We can see easily on things like carrots and lettuces how deep their roots are but stuff like beans and sweetcorn where we are not harvesting the whole plant to eat it is harder to know.

With my sandy soil there is often an inch of bone dry dust on the surface making everything look horrendously dry but now that I've had 3 years of muck dug in it is often surprisingly moist still under the dust. (thank god!)

[Annpan]

Thanks M3... that is what I thought, common sence really. I was just thhrown when someone told me not to water plants - and this was in May when we had no rain and all the seedlings had just been planted. I think it was a tough love theory.