Nursery and Flower Grower

Since a plant has a limited volume of soil to find and absorb nutrients, special attention has to be taken to make sure container soils have adequate nutrient concentrations through the entire crop cycle.

In the last post, I showed that irrigation should occur when half of the available water in the container is used. That amount of water is what evaporated from the soil surface and the plant extracted (transpiration), collectively called evapotranspiration (ET).

When should container plants be irrigated? How much water should be applied? In this post, I describe the first step of irrigation scheduling, when, and the next post covers how much. First some background describing soil tension, available water, and the moisture release curve.

In the previous post, I showed that soil air-filled porosity and flooding can affect the occurrence and severity of root rot. There are some other related factors that can affect root rot too. Soil settling can occur for various reasons and can reduce air- filled porosity.

Parameters for air- porosity and water- holding capacity have been established for container soils. These parameters were developed based on the needs of the plant. But the occurrence of root diseases can be affected by the amount of air and water in the soil too.