Simple.. Not so simple question!!

Do you soak your entire plant (and let it drain thoroughly) every time you water? or- Do you soak every so often and water less on alternate intervals..

I know that will depend on soil/mediums but I suppose I'm looking for a general answer from people.

So, How do you do it?

With the exception of my orchids and a couple of Hoyas, most of my plants stay outside year round and I water with the garden hose, soaking the foliage and the growing medium. All of my plants drain thoroughly and quickly. I do have a few things that stay indoors all the time, a couple of Philodendron's etc. and I take them to the kitchen sink for watering, they are in the same potting medium as everything else which drains quickly and I thoroughly flush the medium at each watering, which is @ every 2 - 2 1/2 weeks.

Lin, Thanks for your reply. That is what I have been doing, I have been watering about every 1 1/2 to 2 weeks,with the exception that some of mine don't stay outside year round. I've been wondering if I might be flushing them too often... Do you skip your garden hose watering if it comes a good rain, on the plants that would get that rain, of course?

I still would like to see what others do as far as watering.

Oh yes, whenever we have rain, I let the rain do the watering! Even the plants that aren't out in the open get dragged out around the pool to benefit from a good shower! With Florida being a Peninsula, it's quite humid here also so there's always lots of moisture in the air.

I tend to underpot water sensitive plants so that they use the water quickly and I can water freely. If it is late evening, I may give a sip until morning and I tend to water on sunny days, and sip on overcast days. This is what has worked for me in using soil that doesn't drain freely enough.

I am working on improving my soil mixes so that the drainage will be better. Then I can use the right size planter and water freely. I have quite a few tropical plants, so this is going to take a while :).

I'm now a Tapla convert. Every time I water I make sure to flush the soil thoroughly. Luckily, most of my plants seem to be in free-draining soil (not that I can take credit for that, it's just what they were growing in when I bought them) and so the water just pours out the drainage holes. They're definitely not getting waterlogged as they need quite regular watering to keep them from drying out. Before I learned anything about plants I used to just dribble the water on - I'm sure the top inch of soil was soaking but the roots were bone dry. I guess this is how a lot of people water their plants.

I prefer a light, chunky, well draining potting medium also. It means I have to water more often, but after experimenting over the years, and losing too many plants from heavy wet soil, I've found that that an airier potting medium works better for me.

Just remember that when a plant is extremely root-bound in it's container, there may be little or no soil remaining, and the water will just pour quickly through the container. I have a large Ficus tree that has needed repotting for more than a year ... I am going to re-pot it next spring! I'm probably going to have to cut the container away from the roots because it is so pot bound. I water that tree three times a day during the heat of summer especially if we aren't getting any rain, otherwise the roots would dry out very quickly and I think the plant would be lost. We are into our dry season now, and though it's not as hot outside I still water twice a week. I live in an area with very high humidity, which the plants seem to love but when there's nothing but roots filling the container, the roots don't retain the moisture or nutrients for long.

The potting mix that most plants that you buy comes in is not the high quality well draining type of mix that Al talks about, so when you see water coming out the drainage holes quickly like that it could be that the plants are fairly rootbound as Lin mentioned, or the other thing that can make water just pour out the drainage holes is if you let the plants dry out between waterings, many potting mixes actually become somewhat water repellent, so when you water them the next time, water will find a few spaces/channels to get to the bottom and out of the container, but it doesn't thoroughly wet the rest of the potting mix. This can lead to you thinking that you watered thoroughly when in fact you really didn't and most of the potting mix is still dry. If you keep flushing water through long enough eventually the soil will get thoroughly wet, but it can take a while.

Some comments copy/pasted from something I posted to a thread @ another forum site. The entire thread has LOTS of good tips about watering, but I don't know if it's appropriate to post a link?

* Watering technique is very under-rated in container culture and can easily make the difference between success and failure. To illustrate: When an apprentice goes to Japan to study under a bonsai master, he will often spend 6 months or more doing nothing but learning how to water before he is entrusted with any work on the master's plants.

Ask a greenhouse plantsman what he feels is the most important job in the successful rearing of a crop, and his answer will be "proper watering".

* A generalization - the more often your planting needs water, the healthier the roots will be, as long as you don't forget to water. The need to irrigate frequently indicates good aeration and drainage, which insures that air is returning to the soil before anaerobic conditions cause the death of fine rootage. Watering also forces old, CO2-rich air from the soil and pulls O2 rich air in behind it.

* Don't water on a schedule. Water when the rootzone is first dry to the touch. This can mean watering new plantings (shallow roots) when the lower parts of the container are still wet, but for established plantings, water when the soil at the drain hole feels dry - or use the sharpened dowel trick. Your sense of touch registers 'dry soil' when soils are still about 40% saturated. Plants, however, can still extract water from conifer bark and peat down to about 30% saturation - after that, water is held too tightly for plants to access.

* Your soil should allow you to water at every watering so that water drains freely from the drain hole. The best way to water a container is: Wet the soil until you 'feel' the container is about to start draining from the bottom and stop. Wait 10 minutes and add additional water until about 10-15% of the total volume of water applied in both applications exits the drain hole. The first water allows dissolved solids to dissolve into solution, and the second watering flushes them from the soil.

* If you cannot water as described above w/o risking root rot, your soil is robbing your plant of vitality. You may be able to correct by adding a wick through the drain hole of the container to remove excess water in the PWT until the planting is mature enough to do it on its own.

Al