Garden Center Hours: Mon-Sat 9am - 5:30pm • Sun 10am - 5:30pm

Critical:  Water Your Mature Trees!

trees

During current drought conditions, it is critical that you water your established, mature trees. Of course, we want to make sure we take care of plants and lawns too, but be sure your trees are getting enough water. Here’s how. 

Trees, especially mature shade trees, provide huge benefits for our environment and they’re difficult and expensive to replace. How could you even put a price tag on a 30-year-old mature Oak tree? 

With summer temps and a lack of depth moisture in the ground due to drought conditions, mature trees need a slow, deep watering every 2 to 4 weeks. If your trees are showing signs of stress, (looking dull, dropping leaves), water them deeply once a week to rehydrate. You can accomplish proper, deep watering by placing a sprinkler between the trunk of the tree and the drip line (edge of the tree canopy) and running it for 45 mins. Then, move the sprinkler 1/3 of the way around the tree and repeat until you’ve watered all the way around. Check your sprinkler placement to be sure you’re not watering the street, the sidewalk, etc. Here’s a simple top-view illustration. 

It’s critical to water trees sufficiently and create depth moisture now in case the drought is prolonged. The more stressed trees get, the more difficult it is to bring them back to good health.

DeAnna

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dolfino Wolf says

    In 45 years living in Texas I’ve NEVER experienced this : o

    The ground is dry no doubt but my neighbors fence ; you can SEE down deep in the ground AND, putting your Fingers in the crack by the fence post you can FEEL AIR MOVING : o

    Very freaky….

  2. Ana says

    Thank you for all info. I had a beautiful Bottle brush tree, It froze 2 yrs ago with freeze. I did not dug it out I did cut it short, its grown not about 5 ft. all bushy. will it ever bloom again. Do i leave it bushy.
    thank you
    Ana

    • james says

      Bottlebrush can be trimmed to just one or three trunks, but I prefer mine to have more trunks than that. So if you just let it grow I think that’s good.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Better than your average email.

The Gill Garden News

Sign up for the Gill Garden News, our weekly e-newsletter! Each Thursday at 6pm, you’ll receive the Garden News direct to your inbox, packed with a weekly gardening blog, garden tips, weekly in-store specials, updates about events, and lots more.