You CAN water plants when the sun shines

Daily Mail (London, England), The, June 14, 2010
Byline: LAURA POWELL

IT’S an age-old piece of gardening advice that’s as sure as using scarecrows to scare off birds: never water your plants in the midday sun because the rays can cause leaf burn.

The theory goes that the droplets of water act as magnifying glasses, which reflect sunshine and so scorch the leaf an unattractive brown. But now, physicists in Hungary — who were troubled by the lack of scientific evidence — have dismissed this tip as ‘speculation’. They argue that tiny water droplets can’t concentrate the sun’s energy effectively enough to cause leaf damage before evaporating. Leading researcher Dr Gabor Horvath says: ‘We believe that completely unrelated types of leaf damage might be partly responsible for the widespread belief about sunburn caused by water drops.’

So don’t hang up your watering can just yet!

LAURA POWELL

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