Gardening advice: How to water your tree well before winter

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Q: You are my best resource when it comes to gardening and thank you for all your informative columns. We are relatively new to gardening and have several questions I am hoping you can help me with.

Could you tell me what is a “good soaking?” I was told at a local garden centre to give my evergreens a good soaking in the fall. Do I count so many minutes per plant — like five for small plants or ten for large ones? How much for big spruce or mature fruit trees?

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A: Thank you for your kind words. Sometimes gardening is far from a precise science. To a new gardener a “good soaking” must be confusing. I am guilty of using such terms as well.

One of my favourites is “Water the tree in well in the fall.” What does that mean exactly? To me, the definition of a good soaking or watering well is to water to the point of runoff. This means applying water slowly. A trickle of water will soak in more deeply than a sharp stream of water will. The sharp stream will begin to run off almost immediately whereas the trickle will slowly penetrate much deeper. Soaker hoses are great for watering things such as perennial beds because they water deeply and do not compact the soil like sharp streams of water will. Leave the soaker hose on a perennial bed for at least an hour to get maximum penetration.

For large trees, I recommend using a root feeder for watering. This is especially good in the fall when you want to get the water as deep to the roots as possible. Root feeders are simply a metal spike to which you can attach a hose. The spike is normally around one meter long and you insert this spike into the ground around the dripline of the tree every few feet and let the water run until it begins to flow out of the hole created by the spike. There is no set time to leave the water on for this. It is something you will have to observe on your own. This same technique can be used for watering in mature fruit trees and other trees.

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For plants with surface roots such as birch, junipers and cedars a slow trickle from a hose placed at the base of the plant will work very well. It is absolutely critical to water all plants very well in the fall. I like to create a depression in the soil around a plant by mounding the soil in a circle around the base of the plant. For smaller plants, a 30-cm diameter circle is enough. For larger plants and trees a 1-to-1.5 metre diameter circle is fine. Put the hose into the circle and leave it on a slow trickle until the water has filled the depression and is not being absorbed by the soil any longer. The length of time for this will depend on how absorbent your soil is, how much organic matter it has etc.

Every week, Growing Things Outdoors runs online at edmontonjournal.com or, if you prefer an epaper format, epaper.edmontonjournal.com

Learn more by emailing your questions to [email protected], reading past columns or my book Just Ask Jerry. You can also follow me on X @justaskjerry01.

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