The Water Margin (aka Water Torture)
I’ve been at Chelsea Physic Garden now for just over a month and I’m beginning to feel that the balance of useful team member v. hindrance is tipping in the direction of usefulness. However, one aspect of horticulture that I have found really hard to get to grips with is watering. How much? When? How often? Which plants? This is of especial importance to me as I look after a glasshouse where the plants are in pots and also look after our standing-out area where everything is in containers.
As someone who is learning, I have been looking for the rules and THE formula to which I can work – hoping that if I do X, Y and Z then all will be well. Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case, the answer to most of my watering questions is invariably, “It depends…….”
It reminds me of when I recently asked a colleague how she made her very delicious chilli paste because I had a glut of chillies that I was hoping to use up. She told me the ingredients but when I asked about proportions or actual measurements, she said that she didn’t measure anything, merely tasting as she went along to see if she needed to add more of anything. In short she used her knowledge and experience to decide.
So speak the experts! I guess it’s hard to communicate something that is second nature to you – a bit like asking someone how to ride a bike – it’s something you learn from experience and the building blocks of how you come to that knowledge are hard to break down into easy to understand chunks for a trainee (or aspiring chilli paste maker).
I constantly ask our garden team questions about watering and here are some of their thoughts gathered over the last month or so:
- ”Consider where the plant comes from and try to replicate those conditions” – to do this you need to know a) where that plant is from and b) what the conditions there are………..
- “Stick your finger into the potting medium – if it’s dry, water it!” – I’ll refer back to no.1 – you need to know what the requirements of that specific plant are as succulents for example would be quite happy in dry soil.
- “When your succulents are wrinkly, they need watering” – this one is pretty simple even for me.
- “Imagine you are that plant – would you want to be sitting in a pot with cold water all around your feet when the weather is cold?” (That one’s from Ben, one of our trainees who has a different way of looking at the world).
- Alan Titchmarsh says “Tap clay pots with a length of broom handle. A dull ‘clonk’ means the compost is moist enough; a clear ‘ring’ means it is dry, so get watering.” This isn’t much use to me as most of our plants are in plastic containers.
So, even though there are some pointers on watering, most of them require you to have some degree of knowledge. It seems that I will learn to use a combination of my senses and knowledge to know if a plant needs watering and this will come in time with experience. As there is no shortcut to experience, unfortunately there is no silver bullet to my watering questions – hopefully the plants will survive my uncertainty about their needs. The consensus seems to be that more plants are killed by over-zealous watering (by trainees) than by under-watering so whilst I get to grips with it, I will be erring on the side of caution.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this subject?
