How often to water new perennial bed?

I know about the 1-inch of water per week guideline, but do newly-planted perennials in 75% sun require a little extra TLC?

I am thinking they might need watering every couple days until established (taking into account rainfall, of course) but I don't want to kill them with kindness.

The garden bed has been well amended down to about 6 inches with leaf mold and rotted manure.

The best way to figure out watering frequency is to do the "finger test". Stick your finger down a couple inches into the ground and see how wet it feels. If it's really wet, then you don't want to water yet, but if it's drying out then you should give them some water. You will probably find that ground in a sunny area dries out faster than in a shady area, so plants that are in the sunnier area will need to be watered more frequently.

Thanks. I am thinking about not using mulch, which probably means more frequent watering. I know weeds will be killer, but eventually, this garden will completely fill in and I don't want bark smothering new growth.

Should I mulch late this fall and then rake it off in early April or just leave the plants alone? Maybe I can walk out into the woods and grab some light spruce branches to lay over. We *will* have snow cover from mid December to sometime in March. We always do.

I don't mean this to be flippant, but you water plants as you do animals- when they are thirsty. We take more or less water depending on the temperature, the humidity, the wind, etc. The only way to know, as ecrane said, is to feel the soil. If it's moist, don't water. Roots need air and water both. Overwatering suffocates them.

Yup, makes sense, thanks.

Having only experience with part shade gardens, do some areas of a 150 sq. ft. garden in full sun dry out faster than others? I amended it all equally, but the native soil was almost dusty.

I don't normally fuss so, but this is my first cottage garden and the first garden I have ever planted in full sun.

When I first began planting the shoots my mother gave me from her garden a few years ago, I just stuck them in the ground and left them on their own, with an occasional water. None died, and I have by now shared bigroot geranium shoots with neighbors. Even the pachysandra mom snipped off and put in a bucket of water for me, I just poked them into the hard, solid dirt using a pencil and no rooting compound. Now we takes shoots from that and grow it in other areas of the yard.

In any case, those earlier gardens are all in part shade, so SUN is a new experience for me. :)

Yes, garden beds in sun are going to dry out faster than beds in shade (assuming the same type of soil in both places of course). And if there's some variation in how much sun the bed gets (one end gets more hours of sun than the other) or if there's a slope from one part of the bed to another then different parts of that same sunny bed could also dry out at different rates. Sunny beds are trickiest when you're first planting things, since transplant shock is going to be more of a problem when the sun is beating down on your plants--once things get established a bit better I think you'll find sunny beds aren't really any harder to take care of than shady beds.

Thanks for the info, ecrane3.

The plants already looked perkier this morning, and we have a few days ahead of clouds and gentle rain. Perfect!

I'm a bit surprised that the plants in my new garden bed are thirsty every day. I don't even have to do the finger test because many plants wilt by mid afternoon. I thought I'd added enough compost to the somewhat dusty dirt, but I guess not. (We normally have lovely, loamy dirt, but this was a very dry spot.)

Since I probably should not dig up all the newly-planted baby perennials, is there any reason why I can't occasionally sprinkle some top dressing and let it work its way into the soil on its own?

Also, if I keep the compost away from the plant crown and drip edge, is there such a thing as too much compost? I figure I'll use it as mulch if it won't harm the new plants.

Actually you do need to do the finger test--newly planted plants can wilt during the heat of the day even if there is plenty of water in the soil, and this often causes people to water too frequently and kill them that way. What happens is that the plants have small root systems, so on a warm sunny day the roots can't take up water fast enough (even if there's plenty of water in the soil), so as a defense mechanism the plant will wilt. It'll generally perk back up in the evening when things cool off and the sun's not on it. So I'd go back to the finger testing if I were you.

I'm not sure if this is a two-way between you and ecrane, but I'll butt in and say that there can certainly be too much compost, particularly depending on what was composted. For example, if you are using composted manure, you can burn up your plants very easily. And it sounds like they have moisture problems already. I'd concentrate on the watering for now and forget enriching the soil until fall. Then the bed can "cure" all winter long.

Thanks dp72.

The compost is a blend of lobster shells and aspen bark.

I'll just keep my finger handy and focus on watering.

But wait ... that brings up another issue. I was thinking about mulching with the compost to keep weeds down (to minimize the amount I have to walk inside the garden bed and risk compacting the soil).

Can I use tree mulch instead? I know to keep it well away from the crown and/or drip edge.

Can you explain what you mean by "tree mulch"? If it's bark mulch then that's fine. Using compost as mulch might help prevent weed seeds that are already underneath it from coming up, but seeds that land on top of it will have no trouble germinating and getting going so I don't think you'll be that happy with it for weed control. Bark mulch will prevent weeds from coming up through the mulch, but it has the added benefit of also making it harder for seeds that land on top of it to take hold, so it should prevent a lot more weeds than the compost would.

Sorry, bark much is what I meant. I buy the really dark stuff so it looks like earth (I don't care for the red cedar look mingled with plants). I believe it comes from aspen. I do know no dyes are used.

I see what you mean about the weed seeds that get pooped out from on high or are carried on the wind. Um, no thanks! :)

I am adding an image of this newly-planted garden, which gives a better idea how far apart the plants are.

The large plants (mondarda, lupine, a single phlox, and iris) I bought at a local nursery because I have no self control around perennials and shrubs. The rest of the plants came from Bluestone Perennials' spring sale (mail order), and they are *tiny* (and some look a little worse for wear but they will rally).

Eventually, this entire garden bed should fill in so that I can't walk around inside it.

To be honest, I also want to mulch so dirt that dries on top of the bed isn't such an eyesore. The dark stuff you see is a light top dressing of compost, but that will be all until very late fall.

I think you'll be much happier if you put some mulch down--it will really help with keeping moisture in the soil and you've got an awful lot of space there for weeds to come in until your plants get bigger. Mulch won't 100% prevent weeds, but it'll definitely cut down on them significantly.

Thanks, that's what I will do.

I still have a pile of mulch left on a tarp from a delivery last summer. This morning, I was shoveling some into the wheelbarrow and noticed that some of it was white and fuzzy. I am guessing mold ...

Prepare yourself for a supremely stupid question, but can I discard the fuzzy stuff and use the unaffected mulch on my beds, or should I toss the whole lot into the woods and buy new mulch?

I'm not being frugal as much as I hate to waste for no good reason. But I sure don't want to introduce disease into a new garden!