So far this season I have been quite tolerant of those of you who like to torture your plants with too much water, but sometimes you see something that forces you to speak up. Let me paint a picture I recently observed.

The villain was a well-rounded gentleman of undetermined age who was barefoot and shirtless. The weapon was an open-ended garden hose with no breaker in sight. The time was noon last Tuesday. The place was the side porch of a house in a town near you.

The victim: well you know how we used to water fight by putting a finger or two over the end of the garden hose, were the plants at the other end of the stream 20 or 30 feet away. My guess is that his wife told him to water the garden and he was doing it.

That episode left me searching for a simple watering guideline. What I came up with is that if your grass is green, there is no established plant in the landscape that needs watering. When it comes to water consumption, turf is the biggest drinker. If it is happy everything else is too.

Of course I need to define established plant. Any annual or perennial that has been in the ground for at least two weeks is established to my thinking. For shrubs it is a bit longer and for trees at least a full season. The larger the tree or shrub the longer the establishment period will be.

If you are fortunate enough to be getting the rainfall I am, the garden water hose should be napping full time in the shed. I have not mentioned containers because that is an entirely different game.

When I add a plant to the garden, I water thoroughly. The biggest reason is to firmly establish contact between the plant and the soil of it's new home. I would then water every three to five days until it has seen several natural rainfalls. After that I wouldn't think about watering until after the turf has browned.

When it comes to watering in the garden, reduce the effort. Don't waste water. Don't listen to your spouse and don't read the first five words of this sentence.