Gardeners may find it difficult to understand the conflicting advice on when to water their plants in the garden. There is an optimum time to water vegetables, and there is a correct response to the question, “When should I water my vegetable garden?”
Best Time to Water Vegetable Garden Plants
There are two options for when to water plants in the vegetable garden.
Watering Plants in the Morning
When it is still chilly in the morning, this is the ideal time to water plants. This will prevent too much water from being wasted on evaporation and enable the water to percolate into the soil and reach the plant’s roots.
If the plants are watered early in the day, they will be better able to survive the sun’s heat since the water will be available to them all day.
It is a common misconception in gardening that watering in the morning makes plants more vulnerable to scorching. That is untrue. First, hardly anywhere on Earth receives powerful enough sunlight to cause water droplets to burn plants. The water droplets would evaporate in the heat long before you could concentrate the sunlight, even if you lived somewhere where the sun was that strong.
Watering Plants in the Afternoon
Watering the garden might be challenging early in the morning due to work and living routines. Afternoon or early evening is the second-best time to water a vegetable garden.
Vegetables should be watered in the late afternoon when the day’s heat mainly subsides, but there should be enough sun to dry the plants somewhat before darkness sets.
Less evaporation occurs when watering plants in the afternoon or early evening, and the plants have many hours without sunlight to absorb the water.
If you water in the late afternoon, one thing to watch out for is giving the leaves some time to dry before nightfall. This is so that your vegetable plants will not suffer from fungal issues like powdery mildew or sooty mold caused by moist leaves at night.
If you use a drip or soaker irrigation system, you may water until dusk since these methods avoid getting the plant’s leaves wet.