Over Watering Plants

When it comes to establish a watering routine for your plants then you need to know just how much water each type of your vegetable needs and when.

Establishing the correct watering routine is absolutely essential, and it is the one thing that in general you will not find on the back of a packet of seeds. Many people will tell you it only comes with experience, however water your plants too little or too much and they will die within days.

For the novice vegetable gardener this can be a disaster and put you off trying to grow any vegetables again. This is because over watering plants is the single biggest killer of vegetable plants.

The problem is if a plant has too little water it will dry out, and then when you do water it the soil will be so dry the water will not go into the soil, but just form beads and run off the soil instead. The other problem can be overwatering and many a novice vegetable gardener may think “I need to keep the roots wet otherwise the plants will die,” and water them daily. Yet for many plants this can be the death of them, as overwatering can at best cause the plants to drown.

This is because whilst the plants need water they also need the roots to be allowed to breathe. Overwatering can result in the leaves going yellow and dying, to the untrained eye you may think they are going yellow through lack of water and water them more and more until they die.

Overwatering can also result in a wide variety of bacteria / fungal rots developing, and when I mentioned overwatering at best drowning the plants I meant just that. Many fungal rots affecting vegetable plants once they occur can mean the soil becomes infected and in some cases the spores can remain active in the soil for as long as 20 years, not only that but the spores can be easily transported around your vegetable patch or allotment on your wellington boots.

That is the good news. When these types of fungal rot affect your vegetable patch or allotment then there is very little if anything you can do to treat them. Indeed most common pesticides simply do not work on them, and you will have to grow the crop elsewhere, and plant another vegetable that will not be affected by the fungal spores in that vegetable border instead.

So always find out the watering requirements of new plants and ensure that you never overwater them regardless of what vegetable they are.

By Richard Allen -