Watering The Garden

Press, Volume C, Issue 29687, 4 December 1961, Page 3

Watering The Garden

Sir, — Among the horticultural hints contained in a “gardening diary” sent from England appears the following, for the month of July, high summer over there: “When watering is done it must be adequate.” For all the help that is, they might just as well have added, “and the water should be wet.” What is “adequate” in this context? A “garden city” such as this must be bung full of experts, so perhaps one of them might vouchsafe an opinion, with particular regard to the millions of gallons that are lavished on gardens during the heat of tiie day.—Yours, etc., ILAM. November 25, 1961. [Mr S. Challenger, lecturer in horticulture at Lincoln College, replies: “Precise instructions about watering are very difficult to give. Watering the garden is rather like the schoolboy mathematical teaser about taps filling a bath which has the bung out. Differing rainfalls, differing soil drainage rates, differing water absorption by different soils, and differing rates of evaporation materially affect availability of water in the soil and the difficulty in producing a “cover-all” instruction. Perhaps the following formula would be more acceptable: When watering is done it should be sufficient to allow the soil in the whole rooting zone to reach field capacity. Field capacity is the term for the quantity of water a soil will hold without loss through the action of gravity. Smaller quantities are useful, but one good soak, to field capacity, is worth far more than many dribbles.’’]