Watering containers can be tricky. They are easy to overwater or underwater. Get some great tips to help you water your container garden correctly to produce beautiful and delicious vegetables.
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so for container gardens is it better to
water daily for shallow root crops twice
a week for deeper rooted crops also how
do you do the soil squeeze test in a
container and avoid the risk of
disturbing the so of the roots I’m in 9B
I get afternoon shade on my containers I
figured out how many cups of water
equates to 2 Ines of water per week for
each of the container sizes I’ll be
using I need to know the best way to
split up my watering so I don’t over
water it has been a problem with me in
the past so great question because I
think there’s probably a lot of people
who are are doing some container
gardening uh I know I am in addition to
my raised beds I also have some
containers that I play with so something
with containers that I would recommend
I’m I’m not usually a huge Gadget fan
but there’s one Gadget that I really
love and it is this moisture meter and
basically what it is it’s a little meter
with a little metal probe and you
basically stick it down I put it all the
way down so that it’s measuring the
water about 6 inches down now uh
depending on where how big your plants
are you might stick it more shallowly if
you have smaller baby tiny plants you
might want to stick it more at the
surface to measure how much moisture is
there so with your
containers you might want to try getting
one of these and here’s why um there are
so many factors that come into play when
it comes to watering containers so
there’s the amount of sun that it’s
getting the amount of heat that the
garden is receiving
uh uh the growing medium so what exactly
is in your container what are the roots
growing in the size of the container and
then the material of the container can
both affect how uh fast they dry out and
then also wind because evaporation can
pull moisture off the top right so with
all these factors it’s hard for me to
tell you exactly how much water that
your containers need what I what I can
tell you is that I had a container
Garden in Brooklyn um do I have an image
of it I think I have an image of it this
one and this container garden it had
stacked containers it’s kind of
misleading because where there’s that
big pile of green is actually stacked
containers and I was watering about one
gallon per day for this whole area and
it was getting some shade uh in the
midday so that uh it was at Peak heat
the plants were not in the sun uh so
they didn’t drive out very quickly even
if it was like 90° outside so that’s
something that I can tell you and I came
to that number because I tested the
moisture levels daily to see what I
needed so here’s what I would recommend
if you get this um if you can grab this
moisture meter and they’re very
inexpensive I saw them online I’ve seen
them in stores um so what I would do to
find out how much water you need in your
containers is basically you you take the
gadget and so what you’re going to do is
you’re test your plant so you had a
hypothesis about watering some things
every day and watering some things twice
a week um so generally that’s if you had
some large containers let’s say for
tomatoes which is essentially what I I
think that you’re talking about here if
you have some large containers with
tomatoes and eggplant yes it’s possible
that you only need to water those twice
a week because they’re they can be
bigger plants when they start to mature
but you don’t want to lose your plant
because uh you underwatered so what you
want to do is stick the moisture meter
in water what you think you should water
for your daily amount uh based on what
you just said you know Watering your
shallower rooted crops daily and your
deeper crops twice a week so do do the
first
watering and then look at the moisture
meter and see where it lands if it’s in
that moist region then you’re fine if
it’s in the dry region you’re you’re too
dry and if it’s in the uh wet you’re too
wet essentially so um when you do this
basically what you want to do is you
want to test every day even if you’re
not watering every day you might water
the big plants a lot that um every or
you said twice a week so you’re watering
extra on those two times so water it and
then come out the next day and test the
moisture level and if it’s still moist
then you don’t need to water it again
and then if you do this for a week uh
it’s a good indicator that whatever
you’re watering if it stays in that
moist range that you’re doing okay now
if your temperatures start to raise by
10° you might want to spend a week
testing again and just go out and stick
the moisture meter in and test and once
you do this for a week you’re going to
get so much information from this so I
know it sounds um to for some people
it’s like oh man it’s one more thing to
do in the garden right I got to go out
and I got to check the moisture um but
if you do this for one week this will
give you so much information and it’ll
be like you intuitively know how much
water the plants need and once that
happens you don’t even need to measure
as much so that’s what you’re after and
one thing to note I I just wanted to
share this with people if you’re looking
for a technology some people don’t like
Technologies and that’s totally fine um
some people love them I’m kind of middle
ground there’s some technologies that I
like and some technologies that I feel
like I can do a better job one
technology that’s kind of interesting in
this realm is an EB and flow wicking mat
so what the mat does is it’s a wet mat
and I would go for synthetic mats
because they won’t mold if you buy
organic materials oftentimes they can
mold and that’s not something that you
want to see happen with your plants um
so a sort of synthetic eanf flow wicking
mat and what happens is you place your
containers on the mat and water gets
soaked up into the root systems from
below so these are kind of interesting
uh they draw up the exact amount of
water based on the pressure of the soil
so they they kind of are self uh
watering in a way and they pull the
right amount of water up through the
root systems now one of the reasons why
this screen says EB and flow wicking mat
versus just a wicking mat the difference
is that you do want your root systems to
go through the process of drying out and
moistening up drying out and moistening
up because one of the issues that can
happen in Paris you mentioned this was
an issue for you in the past is that you
said that over overwatering was an issue
for you in the past so what what
overwatering typically looks like for
people is the plant sometimes gets uh
the tips of the plant might start to
turn brown um you might start to think
that it needs more water because the
tips are turning brown uh and then
basically the stem starts to get soft
the whole plant kind of gets soft and
this can lead to a lot of fungal
diseases because water is where fungal
diseases are are born basically and so
sometimes the stem of your plant will
become really soft and it might even
start to rot it might start to turn
brown or black so that’s that’s how you
know you’re
overwatering and so a lot of times when
we’re overwatering and the stem starts
to do these funny things the plant
doesn’t look good and we we think it’s
something else but really what’s
happening is that because the stem is
rotting no nutrient flow is getting to
the rest of the plant all right so
that’s what I would recommend if you are
willing to uh grab of I think it costs
like a couple dollars to to purchase one
of these if you can find one
uh hopefully you have one locally and um
and if not um the other way that you
could potentially do this
is by watering until water flows through
the bottom of the
container and letting it dry out
completely and the way to know that it’s
dried out completely is to try to stick
your finger down the side of the pot
basically um so very carefully maybe a
knife maybe you take a a butter knife
and you stick it down the side of the
container and you pull gently the
material away from the clay wall or the
whatever kind of material it is for the
container and you see what’s dry and
what’s wet
now um it may damage the roots a bit so
that’s the that’s the problem so that’s
why for containers these work a lot
better so thanks so much for a great
question question that was a really good
question CU I know there’s people with
containers and trying to figure out how
much water is the right
amount