Last week I railed about the excessive watering many people do, even suggesting that most of the plants we lose in our gardens can be traced to too much water. I also promised to suggest a few times when extra water is necessary.

I'll start in the vegetable garden. The vegetable garden is a one-season affair. Happy plants will yield more, although it is well known that the flavor and storage quality is better if the plant grows a little drier.

Several years ago I used two-inch conduit to stake my tomatoes. Occasionally I filled the pipes with water delivering water to the root without wetting the leaves. A watering scheme that does not wet the leaves will lessen disease problems.

Second, if you are a person who thinks a landscape can be born and completed on the same day, you face different watering pressures than those of us who think of it as an evolutionary process. The latter group is happy to take a smaller, less expensive plant and will watch it grow into the landscape we want with lots of moving and additions along the way.

The instant landscape requires larger plants, which have either been pot-grown or dug as ball-and-bale plants. In either case, you probably have gotten more plant than roots. The dug plant has left many roots behind while the large potted plant depended on regular watering for growth and survival.

In either case getting the instant garden growing happily is a higher maintenance issue. You must water more but that is not to say you can't over-water. With transplanted trees it is accepted that they will need careful attention for one year for each inch of diameter in size. That means if you plant a large four-inch tree it will take four years until it is completely established in its new home.

I like the little stuff because it takes hold almost immediately and often catches the big stuff by the time the big stuff is established. The largest tree I planted was a pin oak, which I almost lost in a drought three or four years after planting.

Third, many of the plants that remain evergreen over the winter are shallow rooted and should not enter the frozen ground period dehydrated. Azaleas and rhododendrons top that list. I will set a five-gallon bucket with a few holes in the bottom among the azaleas and rhododendrons if it is very dry as winter approaches.

The others, hollies, boxwoods and conifers have the same needs but to a lesser extent. The difficult part is that all of these plants are generally lower water consumers in the growing season and will be the first of the shrubs to suffer if you have an energetic garden hose.

The last issue is the lawn. Mine comes in two colors, green or brown. So does yours. Mine is brown in the winter and sometimes in the summer if it is hot and dry. The grass doesn't care, as it will quickly turn green with the return of fall showers.

When it is brown I don't have to mow it. You don't mow yours when it is brown either. Think winter. Often I just get to skip a few runs in August. I'm sure you're thinking, "Of course I don't mow in the winter, its too cold." My response is that if mine is brown in August it is probably too hot to mow.