.Uncle Jesse said, “you don't water no garden! God does the watering.”
Many gardeners worry way too much about watering and spend way too much time and money watering their gardens. By mulching, the need for watering is significantly reduced and if enough mulch is added, the need for watering is eliminated. Mulching is a part of soil strengthening. By strengthening the soil, the need for watering is also greatly reduced, even so, no matter how healthy soil is, it must be covered all year long. Mulching and soil strengthening each provide benefits if used alone but both are enhanced by the other. In other words, their individual benefits, when combined, exponentially benefit the ecosystem, plants and gardeners.
Many gardeners worry about watering because one or the other of the above basics is not being done and an ecosystem approach to gardening is not being used. Instead, the focus is on “plants need water, it's my garden and I'm a gardener so I must water my plants.” This kind of thought processing is a setup for additional confusions such as:
(1) Overly emphasizing how many days it has been since it last rained.
This measurement alone is not a good way to know when to water.
(2) Thinking it's time to water because plant leaves are drooping (wilting) in the heat of the day.
Many plants are supposed to reduce the amount of surface area exposed to the sun when it's hot. Humans do. If there is an itch to do something for wilting plants, consider providing shade for portions of the day, just like we do for ourselves and other animals
(3) Thinking water must be constantly added to the soil or added on a scheduled basis through some sort of irrigation just because many gardeners do it.
One of the purposes of strengthening soil and mulching is to retain water and other nutrients in the soil so it doesn't have to be added frequently, or at all, by humans. In strong soil, water and other nutrients are always available and plants can just get them from the soil when needed without having to depend on a gardener knowing when and what plants need.
(4) Concluding a plant must need water because growth seems to have slowed down.
Plants are not supposed to start growing and keep growing at the same rate every day. Also, just because growth above ground is not evident, doesn't mean growth below ground is not taking place. Plants are not supposed to run a three minute mile just because they successfully learned to crawl, walk, trot and jog. It's okay if plants slow down, rest and readjust to changing and less than optimal conditions. A plant alters its genetics to endure less than optimal climate conditions. In the long run, this is beneficial to the plant and the gardener even if “productivity” is less in the short run. Truth is, the process of adapting is also a form of productivity. When plants survive tough times, not only are they capable of greater resilience, they are still able to flourish during the best of times. By watering unnecessarily, gardeners interfere with the tuning process that ensures the plant's long-term toughness, flexibility and viability. The gardener causes the plant to become a dependent on the gardener because the gardener has limited the plant's opportunity to be tested, endure and learn how to take what it has and deal with what it is experiencing. If a plant “doesn't make it,” perhaps a different variety should be tried and/or adjustments should be made to what the gardener is doing or not doing.
By watering unnecessarily, the gardener robs self of another route to understanding Nyame is faithful.
(5) Allowing comparisons to other gardeners to get in the way of natural sense. Also allowing expectations of ideal plant performance to get in the way of taking into account the overall and the specific conditions plants are experiencing.
(6) Allowing the notion of being a gardener to create an “I've got to do something to help my plants grow” mentality. Watering is one of the first things gardeners turn to, then fertilizing. Often, neither is needed in the manner the gardener supplies them.
Nature knows best, when and how. This must become the gardener's grail. Nature is working on a long-range plan for optimum benefit for the ecosystem. A gardener's main job is to help ensure raw materials are available, do what they are being taught by natural world teachers within and without, and then, stay out of the way until there is clearly a need for action.
(7) Unknowingly increasing the need for watering by not mulching, by not strengthening soil, by planting in raised flat level beds and by planting in pots or other types of above ground containers. When plants are not planted in the ground, many of the water supplying benefits of soil and insulating benefits of soil are not available to plants. Combine this with other less than optimal gardening choices and yes, knowing when, how and how much to water can be a stressful chore.
(8) Not using the additional water-saving benefits gained by spacing plants so there is little to no room between them. By spacing plants so as they grow to full size their leaves touch and/or overlap, the outer layer of mulch is cooled, which cools the inner layer, which cools the soil beneath the mulch even further and thus, soil moisture is retained longer. This allows plants that are mulched to still survive and continue to grow when the grass in the yard is suffering. In other words, do not use grass as a way to know when to water garden plants.
Gardening is win-win-win-win-win. Anyone who concludes that the cost-benefit relationship of gardening is just not worth it or is too much work, has not counted even a handful of the benefits but instead has included unnecessary costs. Once watering is removed. gardening effort is miniscule compared to what is gained, some of which can't be gained any other way. Perhaps this is another reason why “you don't water no garden.”
