Watering Calculator
"Water when the top few centimetres feel dry" is good advice and useless for planning. This calculator turns it into numbers: tell it the crop, the size of the container, how much sun the spot gets, the typical daytime temperature and what the pot is made of, and it returns the litres to apply each time and how many days to leave between waterings.
Your garden
Results
Water per watering
5L
How often
Every 2 days
Weekly total
17.5L
3.5 × per week
Watering load
Heavy
What is driving this
- Crop thirst×1.3
- Sun exposure×0.75
- Temperature×1
- Container material×1.15
Values below 1 shorten the gap between waterings; above 1 stretch it.
Check with a finger before every watering — compost that is still damp at four centimetres can wait another day.
Figures are typical averages. Your cultivar, soil and microclimate will shift them, so treat the results as a starting point.
How it works
- 1
Each watering applies about a quarter of the container's media volume — roughly the point where water begins to run from the drainage holes.
- 2
The base interval is three days for an average crop in mild weather in a plastic pot.
- 3
That interval is then stretched or shortened by four factors: the crop's own thirst, how much sun the spot gets, the daytime temperature, and how porous the container walls are.
- 4
Terracotta and fabric pots breathe and dry out fastest; plastic holds moisture longest; open ground buffers best of all.
Frequently asked questions
Save this plan to your garden
Create a free Vegarden account and turn this result into sowing reminders, watering schedules and a harvest log you can come back to.
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