watering in summer

[CoppyCat]

Now that all my plants are outside and in new pots something I'm worried about is what do I do in the summer time to keep my plants from drying out.
Mainly because it's dry and hot here in Oklahoma in the summer...so I'm wondering if any of you have a solution...maybe a pump on a timer to pump fresh cool water into a watering dry at certain times of the day?

 

[Not a Number]

Put the pots in trays, fill the tray with water. Experience will tell you how deep you need to keep the water to prevent the pots from drying out between watering. These come from areas where the air temperatures are routinely above 90F during the hottest part of summer. Evaporative cooling from daily top watering during the Dog days of summer should be sufficient. You should probably provide some shade (at least the pots) on the afternoons if the temperatures are in the high 90sF. As long as the roots never dry out and the soil temperature stays below 89F you should be ok.

If you want to be fancy and hook up a pump on a timer or float valve go ahead, it won't hurt the plants - your pocketbook maybe.

You can always rig up a "bubbler" of some sort if your trays are too shallow to keep from drying out on the hottest, driest days. Or just buy deeper trays.