Proper timing for smart watering

In Utah, irrigation is a must whether you want a green lawn (a pretty dumb idea, between you and me), living plants or a productive vegetable garden.

While we have a “token” lawn and quite a few perennial flowers, all of our irrigation efforts are focused on our veggie garden that supplies us delicious greens.

Up until this season, we used to water our plants after sunset. In the spring, I explained this to the guy who came to reactivate our irrigation system, and he said that this was a bad idea, and that I should water them in the early morning instead, while the temperature is still cool.

According to him, this helps the water penetrate deeper into the soil and reach the roots of the plants without too much water lost to evaporation. Watering in the early morning also supplies enough water to the plants so they can comfortably make it through the day and in particular, helps them to deal better with the heat of the sun.

As we’ve just passed mid-July, this new regimen seems to work well. This, of course, runs contrary to the gardening myth that watering in the morning could make the plants susceptible to scorch, which evidently isn’t true.

To start with, most areas of the planet don’t get intense enough sun for water droplets to scorch plants. Then, even if you’d live in an area where the sun were very intense, water droplets would be long evaporated under the heat before they could focus the sunlight.

If you’re still watering in the evening, try it in the morning!