When should a garden be watered?
Early morning, because not only do slugs love those evening waterings, water on the foliage that doesn’t evaporate makes fungal leaf diseases spread more easily. In the case of say, a Sunday where you stayed out late and therefore didn’t get up for anything qualifying as morning per se, late afternoon is okay, use the soaker setting on your sprayer if you have one and and keep it down at the base of the plants. (Off to water the garden now.
The method by which the water is delivered to the garden is perhaps equally important as the timing of the delivery. Using drip irrigation where the water is applied directly to the soil rather than sprinkling it down over the tops of the plants can help relieve a lot of plant disease and insect problems as well as provide a much more efficient use of water. I use drip irrigation on my raised-bed square-foot garden in Iowa and it’s great. It’s also a whole heckuva lot easier than lugging garden hoses around from spot to spot and getting soaked trying to find just the right position for the sprinklers. A great resource is DripWorks. Order their catalog – it’s great garden p#rn! Try some drip irrigation and you’ll find that the timing question becomes secondary – plus you can put your drip system on a timer/meter and let it do its thing unattended.
