Best Ways to Water Large Established Plants

Here’s Kay in Canton, she asks, “my question is, I’ve got the fire bushes and butterfly shrubs, shrubbery that I know needs water, and I just want to know how much to water it. Some of them have been there for over 10 years. Other ones have been there for two years”

That’s a great question. Okay, burning bush is really easy. You’re not going to root rot that. I would say five to seven minutes, you know, letting the hose run low on the base of that plant. You really want to soak that soil. Then you don’t have to do it very often. So when you water, you want to water very deeply. Allow the water to go very deep into the soil, and then you don’t have to water near as often.

Once a week is not going to hurt anything. It’s probably a good rule of thumb. But like I said, when you water, you want to water deeply. And I probably spent five to seven minutes with the hose running at a pretty good clip and just making circles around each plant and allowing that soil to soak in. Then I’d go to the next plant, do it there, and then go back to the first plant and do it again. And so it really allowed the moisture to get in deep, and they look much better today.

I always kind of tell people, rule of thumb, what you see above is also below, basically, with the root structure. If that plant is pretty substantial, the roots are going to be pretty substantial too. You just kind of have to envision that water and allow it to soak in.

It takes a long time for that water to sink slowly in the ground. So it’s okay to water it, do something else, go back and water it, and then do something else and go back and water it. It allows that moisture to get much deeper in the soil. Then you don’t have to water as often because the plant has available moisture down deep.

For the butterfly bush, their root system is very fibrous, and they like a lot of water. You can go ahead and give them a really good drink. You’re not going to have to water it as long as maybe some of the older burning bush. I would say five minutes once a week, letting that hose trickle out on that plant, maybe like quarter speed, and really just moving that hose in a circle around the base of that plant, out maybe a foot or two from where the trunk goes into the ground. It’s going to soak that soil really well and allow that plant to keep blooming, because it will keep flowering all the way until frost.

Watering is not so simple. When we hire the new kids at the nursery, they’re like, I’m just watering. I’m like, that is the most important job — without your job being done right, none of the rest of us and the stuff that we do matters. Pay attention when you’re doing it, and do a good job because it affects everything else we do the whole rest of the day.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).