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Each vegetable has a critical time during its growth
when lack of adequate moisture can be a serious problem.
“Hot, dry weather leads to high moisture
deficiency in vegetable gardens,” says Maurice Ogutu, a horticulture
educator with the University of Illinois. Unless vegetables get adequate
moisture throughout the growing season, he says, gardeners will experience
serious yield loss.
Different kinds of vegetables have different
water needs. Here are Ogutu’s guidelines for when common homegrown
vegetables experience critical watering periods: • Beans, including
lima and snap: during pollination, pod
development, and pod enlargement. • Broccoli,
cabbage, and cauliflower: during head
development. • Tomato, eggplant,
and pepper: from flowering to harvest. • Dry onions: during bulb enlargement. • Cucumbers,
muskmelons, and watermelons: during flowering
and fruit development. • Carrots, radish,
and turnips: during root enlargement. • Potato: during tuber set and when the tuber is enlarging. • Sweet corn: during silking, tasseling, and ear development. Ogutu recommends that gardeners improve water
efficiency by taking steps to increase the soil’s water-holding
capacity, such as applying plenty of compost or manure before planting.
Other steps he recommends: “Have a small garden
that will not require a lot of water. Plant early so that Mother Nature can
provide most of the garden’s water needs. Space vegetable seedlings
so that the ground is well-covered in early summer; effective spacing will
decrease water loss through evaporation.”
It is important to water your vegetable garden once a
week, Ogutu says, when less than 1 inch of rainfall is received in a given
week. Soak the soil thoroughly with 6 to 8 inches of water to ensure that
it is available in the root zone for uptake by the vegetables. “Water in the morning so that the leaves dry
during the day,” he says. “Do not water vegetables at midday,
because much of the water will be lost through evaporation — and
avoid frequent, light watering and turning the sprinklers on for a whole
day.”
For more information about the University of Illinois
Extension’s Sangamon-Menard unit, go to
www.extension.uiuc.edu/Sangamon.
This article appears in May 24-30, 2007.
