How to water efficiently and appropriately

[bogfrog]

Hi guys,

I am all set up to collect rainwater from my roof, no good for drinking, but its great for all my plants.

Because my garden consists of many many terraces, alot of my pots are sitting on uneven surfaces, which means that most of the water runs straight out of the pot and down the hill.

Since the water supply is a the very bottom of the garden, i am always walking up this huge flight of stairs with two 10L buckets of water -good excersize- but lately i have been getting annoyed at how little water my plants actually absorb, compared to how many times i have walk up the stairs with 20 litres of water!

I figured you semidesert-dwelling aussies might have some nifty tricks up your sleeves to water more efficiently.

Im having the most trouble with my bonsai!! They never seem to be getting quite enough :-o

I was also wondering if anyone could advise me on watering ariocarpi, i have 2 kotschys, 1 fissuratus and 2 restus, but i'm pretty clueless as to how often and how much i should be watering such special plants.

[Stillman]

I use a stubbie ie 375 ml glass bottle. I take my 20 litre bucket fill up the stubbie and controling the flow with my thumb water my pots. It takes a bit longer but you would be amazed how much less water you use. End of the day you only need about 10 % run off so a single 375 ml bottle will do 4 or 5 7cm pots generally depending on medium.

[whitewind]

If the soil is hydrophobic then the water will just run out, suggest filling a bucket with water and dropping yourplantin until the soil is saturated I do this with cacti after every winter dry period. With otherwise dry plants I water a little bit to each pot down the line then start at the beginning again this helps prevent all the water just rushing out.

[bogfrog]

Hey guys thanks for that, i will try the beer bottle today, good excuse to empty a couple too.

Yeah the water doesnt seem to soak into the soil at all, i will also give the smaller pots a good soak in a bucket, but many of the larger cacti are in pots which wont fit in a bucket.

Maybe il try track down a baby bath for them.

[qualia]

just reading around a bit apparently soap is good to speed up the wetting process for hydrophobic soil. i suppose you could add a also a hydrophyllic conditioner to your soil perlite or vermiculite maybe, they have these "wetting agent" granules which are added to a lot of commercial mixes. your bonzai would probably not mind a bit of that in there,

[bogfrog]

Good point, i'll definately add some to my bonsai, but that could be a bit risky with my cacti as i live in an area which will randomly rain non-stop for two weeks or more, no matter what season it is.

Cheers, my plants benefit greatly from all the advice :-D

[chilli]

sounds like you need some kind of soil wetter as qualia says..

I assume the garden at the top of the stairs too far for a hose to reach?

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

I find that with mine, at the start of the season if I give them a GOOD bottom soak for the first few waters, they are able to take in water from above a lot easier... I use a small 1L watering can so I can control the flow, and in small amounts at a time the medium is able to take it no matter the quality. It's just a mater of giving it a cool soak to reawaken the capillary action of the soil after a dry winter.

D00d

[2meke]

maybe try a small amount of coco coir in your mix to hold a bit more water. i think it re wets well after drying out too. sphagnum moss is good in a mix for bonsai that need a bit more moisture than normal.

make sure your bonsai aren't root bound also.

thanks for the parcel to mate! much appreciated.

[qualia]

just watered some dry pots today, noticed that the pot with extra sand vs straight potting mix wetted right through no worries. i'm assuming that's because sand makes tiny cavities throughout the mix which will allow water to get right through the mix?

[Anodyne]

I try to grow mosses and other tiny groundcovers underneath my bonsai. Partly because they look nice, but also because if the pot does dry out, the dry groundcover acts as mulch and helps keep the plant alive. It's a bit of a tradeoff because each pot needs a little more water each day for the extra plant life, but it does help to keep the plants going when it gets dry.

[bogfrog]

I tried the beer bottle trick yesterday evening, and it worked a treat.

After an extremely hot day today, everything still has damp soil.

Gave all the bonsai got another water today, all looking happy.

Probably extremely rootbound, yes.

I have lots of little mosses growing under and on my bonsai, they really do make them look so beautiful.

I'm on placement at a montessori kindergarten at the moment so I spent all day getting 3 & 4 year olds into planting veges and flowers and watering all the half-dead plants around the centre.

Very enthusiastic little greenies, one 4 year old boy even asked me to bring him some more yams tomorrow so he could plant them in his garden at home!

[PositiveHAL]

hows about getting saucers for your pots, this is a good way to water from the bottom up, but you need to be very careful with them, you dont want your pots sitting in pools of water all the time. i guess it depends on where they are, if they're exposed to rain i wouldn't use them but for me being on an enclosed balcony with no rainfall they're ideal.

[PositiveHAL]

bottom up watering of pots is superior to overhead watering, it allows the potting mix to slowly take up and absorb the water as opposed to violently 'rinsing' the potting mix with water. also overhead watering can lead to leaching of nutrients from the mix. One of the big drawbacks from overhead though is a greater liklihood of spreading diseases, fungal problems, and weeds on the top of the pots

[bogfrog]

Very convincing Dave, i'll try retrain myself to do that.

[whitewind]

On the other hand, washing through the nutrients and salts can be good for the soil esp. if you feed a lot with chemical ferts. Also, it can help with seed germination as washing through like this can get rid of inhibitors in the seed coat which otherwise remain in the soil around the seed. Waterborne diseases like Phytophthora and Pythium can transfer between capillary matting or plants with shared water trays although overheads with a large splash can do the same.

[PhoenixSon]

bottom up watering of pots is superior to overhead watering, it allows the potting mix to slowly take up and absorb the water as opposed to violently 'rinsing' the potting mix with water. also overhead watering can lead to leaching of nutrients from the mix. One of the big drawbacks from overhead though is a greater liklihood of spreading diseases, fungal problems, and weeds on the top of the pots

 

as whiteywind said bottom watering pushes the salts to the top that then accumulate.... i have heard thats why in commercial nurseries they use overhead watering... be interesting to find out if this is true?

[Stillman]

10% run off each watering is in my opinion necessary. I feed my plants with every watering but.