How much should you water your Northeast Ohio garden during a drought?

CLEVELAND, Ohio — You might remember that we had very little winter at all last year. We only had a few light snowfalls, and the snowplow guys didn’t have much work to do.

Temperatures did not go very low. There was a good amount of rain once it started to thaw. And it thawed very early.

Trees, azaleas and forsythias, and bulbs all came up two to three weeks early. We had lots of spring flowers to admire, such as flowering crabs in April, and then came May.

Partway through the month, we were hit with very little rain. This was when the trees and shrubs needed rain to continue their rapid growth and to produce and push out buds for flowers and fruit and leaves. They were using their stored starch reserves from the previous year to get started and were having a tough time making more.

We experienced “abnormally dry” conditions and “mild drought” month after month throughout the growing season, all the way into October.

Here in Northeast Ohio, we had less extreme drought than elsewhere in the state. Southeast Ohio counties had catastrophic droughts which were very damaging to crops and probably to longstanding trees and shrubs.

So, water played a significant role in this past season’s successes and failures in our gardens.

You may be wondering: How much water do plants need? The standard answer is an inch a week.

How do you measure this? One way is by a rain gauge, which needs to be large enough and far enough away from a trees, buildings, and sprinklers to accurately collect rainwater (and only rainwater). Or, you can use an empty tuna fish can (or two or three) placed around the garden. After a few days of a given week, you can check how much water has accumulated in the can.

Your watering tasks will be evident based on the amount in each spot. If there is less than an inch in the can, you need to add more by watering. If there is more, your plants should be fine. We were inches below average monthly rainfall almost every month this summer. If you were diligent about watering, this was probably reflected in your water bill.

Watering in the morning is usually recommended because there is less chance of water staying on the leaves of your plants overnight and inviting the disease cycle to visit them. The cycle needs a host that is susceptible, the disease organism hanging around, and the right environmental factors: humidity and temperature are key. If you only have two of these factors, you have less chance of getting the disease on your plant. High temperatures during the summer combined with a lack of rainfall was a boon for our disease cycle.

Watering in the afternoon not only leaves the leaves damp overnight but also can sometimes cause leaves to scorch when strong sun is magnified by the water droplets.

Watering at night is not recommended for the reasons cited above.

Another aspect of watering is that city water is intentionally kept at a pH above 7.0, considered neutral on a scale of 0 to 14. (Cleveland’s was between 7.0 and 7.8 in 2023). That places it on the alkaline or basic end of the pH scale, which keeps the water from corroding our pipes, particularly lead pipes in older homes.

Most plants we grow prefer a slightly acidic soil environment (pH below 7). Standouts that “love acid soil” include blueberries (5.5), rhododendrons, and many evergreens (conifers). Some professional growers attach a device to their water supply to neutralize the city water.

Your soil can be analyzed by a soil test lab from universities such as U of Massachusetts Amherst and Penn State. Soil that has properties for holding moisture (but not too much moisture) will benefit your growing space. My teachers told me that much of gardening depends on soil.

If you have an hour in the garden, always spend part of it on soil preparation or maintenance such as weeding, composting or mulching. During the recent drought, a mulch of leaves or straw provided excellent protection from the relentless sun. A garden that is well mulched with several inches of straw may not need to be watered frequently. Deeply watering vegetables once or twice a week encourages their roots to grow down: lightly watering every day does the opposite. Plants in containers dry out more quickly than those in the ground, so they may need daily watering.

There may be trees or shrubs in your garden that were weakened from the drought.

Before you make a drastic cut when pruning, check the stems for live tissue by gently scraping a small section of bark with your thumb. If you see green (cambium), then you are good to go. Brown means the branch is dead.