RENEGADE GARDENER™

Don’t water your garden beds with a lawn sprinkler.

Throwing the old lawn sprinkler on to water our shrubs and flowers is taking the easy way out, and you all know how I feel about that.

It’s important to avoid any unnecessary moisture coming in contact with the foliage of all plants you grow, perennials especially. Wet leaves cause fungus. So how do you control the rain, and the dew, and the daytime humidity? You don’t, it’s natural, and in wet years you have more fungal disease than dry years. But the one thing you can control is your ability to not make matters worse.

Water your gardens in the early morning, with a watering wand attachment. Water the soil around the base of the plants, not the plants themselves. This applies to everything we grow. As the sun rises higher and temperatures increase during the day, water that does get on the leaves will dry away.

This sprinkler was on at 8:00 p.m., just approaching sunset. Poor guy got home from work late, realized his garden needed watering, opted for the easy way out, and dragged out the sprinkler to do the work, guaranteeing that these plants spend the night wet. Ouch.

Don Engebretson
The Renegade Gardener