The thought (and phrase) was definitely “burn them up,” as several others have noted. I have never done it anyway, specifically to avoid wasting water.
This was the only halfway-plausible rationale I could come up with. The “water drops focus sunlight” idea was a new one on me and seemed whack from the get-go. It’s a total non-starter.
That struck me, too. The same thing happens here, and I’ve never seen the plants spontaneously kick the bucket from it.
Thanks for that; those speak directly to my question.
River Runner, those links did not work for me, sadly. But, again, as a very experienced nursery person in the Hot South, watering like the dickens all summer, I don’t see the “burn” factor as true at all.
An odd factor may be what I call “Magical Watering”, where one may sprinkle plants lightly every day, figgering that’s enough, and, really, that doesn’t work well. It makes people feel better: 'Yep, I WATERED", but doesn’t do much for getting plants established. Not Rocket Science, but, honestly, from my botanical mentors, and my own observation, most folks don’t know how to water well. Much better to give plants a deep soak at the roots once a week during hot months, to get good root growth.
This past week, I have fielded this question at my nursery about why plants “haven’t done well”, and, it so often boils down to not good conditions of planting, which usually leads to needing more watering, connecting to the OP.
Um, Uncle Brother Walker, as Colibri says, your interpretation of plant physiology is a bit off.I’m dead tired from answering plant questions that I love, all weekend, as my job, but will make best effort to come back here and answer yer ??? soon.
When I subscribed to Organic Farms and Gardening, they recommended watering during the heat of the day since watering in the evening could encourage the growth of molds. FWIW, I water my garden regularly during the day. Evaporation? Well, it mostly soaks into the soil pretty quickly. I have never seen any evidence whatever of burning. I had heard that story about lensing, but it sounded like total BS to me and I still think it is.
This is obviously not something I can cite, but FWIW my neighbor, who used to be the head groundskeeper for the Arizona Diamondbacks, told me that the droplets focusing sunlight and burning the plants/grass thing is 100% horseshit. My other neighbor who owns a landscaping business waters his lawn in the middle of the day in the middle of the summer* and has the 2nd nicest lawn on the block, behind the Diamondbacks guy.
*I don’t know why he does this and I doubt it’s very conservation-friendly but the point is it doesn’t “burn” his grass, and you wouldn’t find better conditions for it to happen than Phoenix in the summer, if it were true.
Well, of course droplets of water magnify the sun’s rays & cause burning…that’s why when you are in direct sunlight and you have droplets of water on your skin, you are subsequently covered with blisters whose size correlates to the water droplets!:rolleyes:
And that’s also why all the plants die when the sun comes out after it rains in the daytime.
This was going to be the main line of my post. I once asked my gardener about this and his response was “When do you eat? When you are hungry. When do you sleep? When you are tired”. Water plants if you see they need it. Even after night rains, sometimes I see my plants looking limp at noon. I water them and they come back.
There might be some very particular plants that might suffer for being watered under the sun, but IME, they are not and they welcome the water when they need it the most.
Good question. The people who moved here from the southeast and midwest in the late 19th and 20th century tried to bring their culture with them. They ended up with really dumb things like this (note the chimneys; the peaks and spire are to keep snow off the roof, and all the large windows are to allow sunglight in to warm the house :smack:) and lawns. I agree that it’s ridiculous and a huge waste of resources.
I investigated this on the internet and this is a total myth. Watering in the day may lead to some evaporation but it will not burn the plants.
Per:
Linda Chalker-Scott, Ph.D., Extension Horticulturist and Associate Professor,
Puyallup Research and Extension Center, Washington State University
The Myth of Hot-Weather Watering
“Watering plants on a hot sunny day will scorch their leaves”
The Reality
This is one of those myths that refuses to die. Although most (but not all!) of the .edu web sites I checked dispel this myth, hundreds of other domains on the web keep the misinformation alive. If your plants are showing signs of water stress in the middle of the day, by all means you should water them! Postponing
irrigation until the evening (not a good time to water anyway, as this can encourage fungal pathogens) or the following morning could damage your plants and open them up to opportunistic diseases.
Yes, this is just a myth or old wives tale, or farmers lore akin to planting by the light of the moon.
Ever notice how an afternoon thunderstorm in Georgia kills wide swaths of vegatation? No? I didn’t think so. You can have a mid-day rain followed by a hot afternoon sun and it doesn’t hurt a thing, plants thrive. Anyone ever see or document an occurance of killing a plant with mid-day watering? No? I didn’t think so. Devote a plant or 2 in your garden to this experiment and water them during the heat of the day and just see if it even hurts them, it won’t.
I watered today at 2:00pm when it was 90 degrees out, because I work nights now, and the garden is just fine. Probably wasted a little water due to evaporation and that is it.
