Somehow the thought of you watering for 4 hours during a drought is not a good one. Your water is in short supply, no?

Nope ... I conformed to the drought restrictions that were in place for only 3 weeks in that period. I guess after the wettest March on record here, the county may have had managed its water resources.

Newly planted shrubs and perennials need regular watering for at least two years (in my opinion) if there is insufficient rainfall. It doesn't mean you chose the wrong plants for your location. Many perennials go dormant early in drought years and bounce back the following spring. Shrubs sometimes suffer more transplant shock than perennials and need more care and watering in a dry year. After all, there is likely more money invested in shrubs than in your perennials. If your soil is sandy and/or well-drained, the shrubs may need a couple of pails of water on their roots weekly. Do not just sprinkle the surface with a hose. The same goes for the perennials. Water well about once a week. I use plastic watering cans myself and put the water on the roots of individual plants that need it. If you are watering with a hose, run it long enough so that the soil one or two inches deep is actually damp. Otherwise you are doing more harm than good, by encouraging the plants to keep their roots right at the soil surface. Annuals are expendable if necessary if you are limited in amount of water or time to do it. Or just select a certain bed or patch of annuals that you want to maintain in flowering condition and let the rest go. Pray for a wetter fall.

I agree with ontnative.

Newly planted perennials and shrubs need plenty of water in order to get established.

This year, al me newly planted items were initally getting one full watering can each week. As it got hotter, I switched to twice a week. Some that loved water (liked astilbe) I wound up watering every day, sometimes twice a day.

The majority of my older plants, otoh, get very little in the way of supplemental water - in fact, yesterday was the first time I broke down and used the sprinklers on my beds. I ran them for over two hours per bed.

brinck,
good advice above. i hope that when you planted your shrubs and trees(and slope-located perennials) you made sure that you made firm non-sandy saucer rims around the plant. Saucers are necessary to contain the water so that it is delivered to all the roots and doesn't run off. it is also a good way to gauge 'enough water'; fill it to the top and it will slowly perc down. for what it's worth, i also always spray the folliage of my trees and shrubs; the water is immed'ly absorbed through the leaves.

one cannot stress more strongly that 'the finger in the soil around the plant' is the best way to assess dry/moist.
newly planted trees and shrubs can also be unintentionally drowned/suffocated.

definitely wait til next spring to remove plants. some lose lots or all of their foliage and retreat to their roots, which rebirth next spring.you prob. alrdy know this, but do not expect nurseries to replace plants that you lost due to weather. we all certainly sympathize w/ your situation; it is scary for all of us in drought times.

best,
mindy
www.cottonarboretum.com/

brinck, plse also keep in mind the option of providing shade for your new plants. rigging up temporary burlap 'roofs' on stakes, while ugly, might really help save your day. We once had no option but to move a LARGE established rare shrub in july; it immedly looked croaked; we rigged up a tall tent over it, watered and monitored it 'religiously' and it is here to tell the tale.
best,
mindy

Agree with above advice re: watering to get established and shading.

I thought I was the only one who made "saucer rims" :0b

boy i HOPE you're not the only one making saucers. otherwise, i don't know how shrubs and trees can survive!
your sister in saucerhood,
mindy

You can't judge the drought tolerance of a plant until year 3, in my experience. For example, I have several viburnum in an area where they really get less water than they would prefer. The first few years we had to water them frequently. This summer we have watered them once even thought it has been as hot and dry (if not worse) than the past years. I water the gardens right around my house only, usually once a week, sometimes twice. But the summer these plants were put in (this is year 3 for most) I had to water every day. I had one hydrangea (a Little Lamb) that had to be watered twice a day! Now I water it once a week or less.

that is a very good point, sue. my experience as well.
best,
mindy

onthebrinck, my father's place where I garden is just one town east of you.

It's been beastly this year and I sometimes water twice a day for young plants.

The hauling of 5 gallon buckets up to the street bed and making the rounds with the hose are getting pretty old but even some established plants start to droop after a few days of this relentless heat.

Do you have the ability to run some seeper hoses from an outdoor spigot fitted with a splitter through beds close to the house? I haven't done it yet but you have a significant investment to protect for this and next year. You'd still have to hand fill "water wells" around trees/shrubs away from the house but it would really cut down on the hand watering. Just don't forget to install a backflow valve on the side of the spigot splitter where you attach the seeper hoses...don't want water backing up into your basement if you have one. I believe these spigot fittings are available at Home Depot and Lowes. Give a call to Brock Farms also as they may have supplies needed. Instructions are available online under "seeper or weeper hose" searches.

My father has his own well water not far from a couple NJ American Water Co. reservoirs and there haven't been any water restrictions here.

Good luck to both of us if all the regularly forecast "thundershowers" that haven't produced rain so far don't pan out soon. :)

Thanks all for the advice and sympathy! Hopefully the next week will bring temperatures not above the mid-80s rather than well into the mid-90s, and some welcome rain. I just dug in a 6x6 sandbox for my granddaughters (in the 90F heat ... oy) and through off a batch of topsoil that I used to bolster the saucer and mote construction around some of my more sensitive new shrubs. I really am quite a scene constantly on my hands and knees in the garden developing and repairing my own little levy system. So far, I've lost very little ... two 'false heathers' that started out in the wrong place and didn't survive a transplant, and some Impatiens that I thought were in shade until the summer sun proved me wrong (lol). Don't get me wrong --- absolutely nothing looks healthy and some things look exactly the same in size as when I planted them in April, just a bit browner.

Luckily, I made a conscious effort to 'fit into' the neighborhood gardening scene by choosing shrubs and perennials that already existed on my street --- so I can easily see that even more established plants are suffering with this weather. I haven't seen any of my neighbors out watering, so I can assume that they are confident things will survive.

This post shows why it is a good idea to plant as much in the fall as you can. The plants have more time to get established.

Next year I plan to buy several weeping hoses (or whatever they are called) and tucking them among the plants, leaving them for the summer. I will hook each hose up to the solid hose once a week and let it run for several hours. Easier than dragging a hose around, plus the water gets to where it needs to be. But I can't do this in areas 300' from the house. We have about 4 acres and this is why I don't have much landscaping away from the house, too hard to get to it all.