I water all of mine, even established ones, in the summer here.

Clematis do not have the reputation of being drought tolerant.

For most common types, I agree. Unless their roots are in a naturally shady, moist site, they benefit from moisture.

bellarosa ... i'm with you ... i really try never to water my clematis unless we are really in a drought situation ... don't know if it's right or wrong, but i try to keep the soil as inhospitable as possible for slugs ... (slugs: ick, ick, ick!)

my clematis are very healthy, so they seem to be content with only rainfall and rare supplemental watering ... phyl

Clematis have the reputation of being water hogs so I tend to agree with Michael and BorS. Mulching helps as does living in a zone where the temperatures don't get really hot and dry and if the clematis are planted in an area where the soil stays moist-ish.

Your clematis is going to tell you whether it needs water or not by going limp due to loss of water pressure, known as turgor pressure, in plants. However, you could damage your clematis and set it back if you wait until the plant shows signs of water deprivation so I tend to water mine weekly in the heat of the summer.

We have to water everything here. Not enough rainfall the past few years, hot, humid and windy. If you get enough rainfall I am sure you could get by without watering, sadly we do not.

Carol

I haven't been too good with the "stick your finger an inch down to see if it is wet enough" and don't really understand just how wet it should feel.

So I bought a gadget at HD where you stick the probe part into the soil and a meter swings from very dry to very wet in 4 increments. The packaging gave some moisture requirements for other plants, but not for clems.

My thinking is that if the meter shows very dry or dry, it needs water. But not so sure on wet or very wet.

Of course, the last 4 days of rain make the gadget unnecessary know. I KNOW they are all very wet.

Marie in ME

A properly planted and mulched clematis should not need watering every day it doesn't rain. You need to encourage deep root growth by infrequent but deep watering. Merely sprinkling every day encourages shallow roots which will remain dependent on you for their water. If you have such a clematis and go away for a few days during the heat of the summer, the clematis is likely to die or get severely set back since it won't have developed a deep root system to sustain itself in your absence and it doesn't rain.

The problem here is that it rains and rains and rains and then stops around the forth of July and doesn't rain again for two months or so. Everything has shallow roots from the frequent rains and everything suffers every summer when it stops raining. It does it overnight and despite trying to water something fries every year. Drives me crazy.

BorS, I would have thought in your area with all that rain in the spring that the plants would develop deep root systems and not shallow ones.

No, it doesn't soak in all that far because of roots from competing neighboring trees. The grass browns out over night when the rain stops. It rains very softly, not a downpour like in the Southwest.

One can't generalize about the frequency to water a clematis or anything else. We get 14 inches of precipitation a year and the air is as dry as a popcorn fart. I water our 60 plus clematis plants a couple times a week and we have had great success over the years.

hint: if it rains a plant needs to be watered less than if it doesn't rain.... hint:the hotter the more evaporation...hint: the higher the humidity the less evaporation....hint: wet soil has more water in it than dry soil. Use common sense. If you are walking around the dry desert in 100F temperatures you need more water than if you are sitting in the shade sipping on a lemonade. A clematis or any other plant will need or not need to be watered according to local conditions.

Okay BorS, I was thinking about your area in general and not your specific garden. If it doesn't rain a lot at any one time and there are trees soaking up what is available, that would be a lot like watering very lightly on a daily basis, hence the plants would not develop deep root systems.

Gosh plantcompost, who would have figured that wet soil has more water in it than dry soil! LOL

Plantcomposter, you expressed my initial reaction. Nckvilledudes, sometimes the obvious needs to be stated as the previous postings ignored the obvious. The issue isn't how often does a clematis need to be watered but how much water does a clematis need. We also need to throw in the variable that there are dozens of species of clematis that have evolved in quite diverse ecologies.

And I should probably modify what I said to "if it is hot and sunny, and hasn't rained much lately, I water".

This can be every day for some periods of time.

BorS - never complain about gardening conditions in Portland. It is gardening heaven! I have lived all over the country and would give my right arm to be transferred back to Portland. Nowhere in the country is as wonderful as the Willamette valley for growing things. Even with the long rainy season and the sunny dry period - I would take it in a second. Just think - you have even temperatures, low humidity, great soil, no really bad bugs, no brutal frozen solid winters, no searing summers with months above 90 degrees, no fire ants or Japanese beetles, no hurricanes or armadillos, a great gardening community, and a zillion cool nurseries. Watering for a couple of months when the weather is gorgeous is a small price to pay for living in paradise.

Eliz from Charlotte, Houston, Denver, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and **Portland**

I'd move back to Phoenix in a heartbeat.
I hate, hate, hate the grey skies and drizzle here.

If I was retired or didn't have to work, it wouldn't be as bad but it always seems to rain on the weekends even if it is sunny during the week. Plants do love it here but I spent far more hours actually gardening when I lived in Phoenix. I spend more time here talking about gardening online as I'm not into wearing rain gear to garden.

February had 25 days of rain. That is a lot of grey skies and drizzle in one month. Broke the record. Not a good thing.

There are a zillion cool nurseries here though! Many of them are covering large areas of selling space too.

I missed the lilac festival because it rained three weekends in a row and I didn't want to get my camera wet.

Please cross your fingers that it doesn't rain Saturday so I can get pictures at Gail Austin's.

BorS, visited Phoenix in October and it was over 100 the whole time. Yes, low humidity but over 100 is hot regardless of the humidity. You can have that area of the country. I would much rather be outside getting wet in the drizzle and gardening and not having to worry about watering from May to October due to heat and lack of rainfall. I personally think planting in the rain is best for the plants and me!

Alpiner, nothing I saw above ignored the original poster's question. She asked for people's thoughts. BorS made a claim that clematis are not drought tolerant plants. The inference is that if you live in a zone where there is adequate rainfall that you don't have to water the plants as much because mother nature will take care of it. If not, then you have to water.

Michael stated that clematis like moist conditions, hence if you live in a zone where that doesn't naturally occur, then you will have to supply moisture.

I stated that clematis that are properly mulched will need less water but that clematis do need water.

Carol said that she lives in a hot humid windy area hence the need for rain.

I could go on and on but the point is that the obvious was stated in a gardeningwise way. Also, you have to either generalize or talk about your specific gardening requirements when you post here-especially when the original poster asked what people's thoughts were. Perhaps you should go back and reread the entire thread.

When you live in Phoenix you get acclimated to the heat and it isn't nearly as bad as when you are visiting. When I go now, I suffer and my friends have to turn up their A/C.

When I lived there I had fabulous gardens. All it takes is water and in some cases shade. Roses do very well. I didn't really know about Clemmies then. I'm sure there are some that do just fine. There are so many more desert adapted plants available now than there were then. There are annuals you plant in fall and then another set in late spring so you have color in pots year 'round. Bougainvillea and Hibiscus bloom almost year 'round too.

Plants do love it here but so do fungi and weeds......

I just don't like getting wet and being muddy and cold.

I prefer getting wet, muddy and being cool. There was a funny t-shirt they were selling in Scottsdale when I visited. It was a picture of a skeleton surfing on a surf board over the desert. The caption read "But it is a dry heat!". LOL

The weather forecast for Memorial Day is sunny and dry. The first time in 6 years. The last 5 have been rainy. Kinda spoils the barbecue.....

It is actually "news" that it is supposed to be sunny. It was in the newspaper and on the news this morning.

That T-shirt has been around a long time. I bought my husband one years ago. They are funny.

Went on a trip to The South once, you've never seen so many miserable people as we were. NOT a dry heat. July and Aug not good months to visit KY, TN, LA and GA! We all thought it was much worse than 110* in Phoenix.

Oh I agree BorS. Suppose to be close to 90 degrees here this weekend with increased humidity and still no rain. In the summer here, you walk outside and in no time are drenched in sweat. It's so bad that you look like you have been taking a shower! While in Scottsdale in the 100+ degree days, I still sweated--just not as much! Hence my desire to live in a climate where it is overcast, cooler, and drizzly!!! LOL Cool wet is definitely more comfortable than hot,humid, and miserable!

BorS, I promise you that anyone who lives in the south would willingly change places with you in the summer. I had friends visiting here from England, California and NY last year during the first part of September. They said the heat slapped them in the face as soon as they stepped off the plane and that it felt like they couldn't suck the air into their lungs :-). I told them that you wear the air here, not breathe it. It's that thick with humidity. Welcome to the sunny south!!

Carol

Ha! Ha!

Here in Alberta in the summer we get our 80f temeratures in the daytime but then it cools off to 50f or lower at night. I like the coziness of puting on the pajamas and sleeping under a blanket even in mid summer.

We have dry air and I much prefer it to humid air. Paper money is snappy crisp. The downside is that my hair doesn't curl like Squiggy's as when I grew up in Nova Scotia.

Alpiner, as much as I don't like the heat, the thoughts that much of the winter would be miserably cold would prevent me from wanting to move to your area. Also our falls are very long and sometimes plants are still growing and flowering in December. The best of both worlds would be great though!

Exactly, Miguel! As hot and humid as it is here in the summer, at least you don't have to shovel humidity! I don't "do" cold very well. I had a clematis and roses blooming until December this year. I guess we all "bloom" where we are planted and that there are positives and negatives to living anywhere. :-)

Carol

I agree with Harryshoe. I water mine daily. Last year I didn't water as much as I should and it didn't cover my trellis like the year before. This spring has been super dry here and the daily waterings have been a huge help to it. It has already climbed past last years final height and is on its way to the top! I couldn't be happier! Nice Fat blooms too!

I hardly ever water my clematis after the first season. I don't even have to water much then, only every couple of weeks if there is no rain. I have heavy moisture retaining clay, year round rain (no dry season), and not that many summer days in the 90s.

BTW, one of the things I enjoy most about clemmies is that I don't have to use all those extra little tricks I do to grow "dry" plants like planting in the high part of the yard, or near the foundation or paved areas, raising them high, adding rocks & using gravel mulch, tons of Profile, etc. Clemmies like my soil. And I really like them.