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Watering TreesDry summers can damage trees. What can you do? |
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Transcript: Watering Trees
When I was a kid growing up in South Texas, we had a gray water pipe that went out from the kitchen sink and watered a little tree right outside the back of the house. That tree grew very lushly with a daily supply of water. We moved away and, within a year, that tree was dead.There’s a lesson in this: trees build their root systems where there is a dependable water supply. We create problems in our landscape when we miswater. That is, applying water frequently but not very deeply we encourage the trees to build a shallow root system dependent on what we provide. It’s much better to give them a good deep soaking just during the peaks of drought to help them through to help alleviate the stress and then back off and let them survive on what nature provides.
Now a good deep soaking means about two inches of water to really thoroughly wet that soil deeply, at least an inch. You can use a straight sided container. Just set the can down, turn on a water sprinkler, and water the area from the trunk of the tree out beyond the branch spread. You see, tree roots reach way further than the branches out on all directions and you want to thoroughly wet that zone. So after you’ve caught an inch or two of water move the sprinkler around the perimeter of the tree and continue to wet a large volume of soil.
By providing this rescue treatment on a very infrequent basis, you can help the tree get through a stressful summer drought time. This is especially helpful for older trees that are weaker, or trees that are stressed from construction, or young trees.
With your commonsense tip on helping getting a shade tree through summer drought, I’m Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006