when i had too many pots in the pole barn ... due to moving .. i went to the dollar store... 4 ice cube trays for a buck .... bought 16 ... place on the north side of a building... anywhere in the shade ... fill with water... next day .... break into a bucket .... and disperse around the new plants .... when it warms.. and the plant MIGHT need some water ... the cubes will melt.. and give it some ... if you water in the ground.. and freeze the plants into an ice cube... you might harm your babes .... that's my best idea.... cant say i have tried it... good luck ken

How often should i water in a greenhouse in winter and how often should i water a saguaro in winter il live in Houston

I started using warm water about 20 months ago. I started with water about 100 F. I got bolder and up the temp tp about 120 F about 14 months ago. I add the water very little at a time so I didn't hurt the roots but was able to heat the dirt down deep. This year I poor 120 F water in the compost /mulch that insulates the tree roots and I pour 160 F water around the trees beyond the root base into the compost pile the trees were placed on top of. This goes deep under the trees active roots and warms the whole bed. This has worked well. All my trees are in ground or containers to big to handle individually and all my trees are outside permanently and under glass will little heating. Steve Steve

@spanishfly the point of perched water is that it can be bone dry at the top of the pot while the bottom can be a swamp where roots drown. You can't guess about the conditions at the bottom based on eyeing anything outside the pot. Just because the pot is terra cotta doesn't mean you escape the consequences of using a soil mixture that retains too much water. Why wouldn't you just test for water at the bottom of the pot with a skewer? It's so cheap to buy a pack of 100 skewers that they are basically free. The biggest impact I ever had on growing cactus and succulents was switching over to gritty mix. I would say the ability for the soil to drain - and minimize perched water - is everything to these kinds of plants. I couldn't disagree more strongly that this has no relevance in a small pot. You might be side-stepping this issue if you under-water, which cactus generally love. If you have a soil mixture that retains too much water you might not have a long-term problem because so much time is passing between waterings that even a soil mixture that retains too much water would dry out. But that is just a kind of learned compensation for whatever water retention characteristics your particular soil mixture has.