Question: how much water does a plant need to grow?

Isabel Webb answered on 19 Mar 2014:

Plants need water for several reasons. These include the obvious reason of photosynthesis, but also for carrying dissolved nutrients from soil and also providing enough pressure for cells to stay solid. All of these factors add up meaning that plants need an awful lot of water.

Our understanding is not perfect enough to predict the exact amount of water – and so our knowledge is from previous experience and every plant needs a different amount. We know how much to water by remembering how much we watered our last plant that survived well – and this is what farmers do and need to know