Kyiv starts using tree watering bags to save plants during summer heat

As summer blooms, Kyiv authorities tested tree watering bags to save plants from the high heat.

Kyiv is known as the greenest city in Europe.

What is the problem?

The hot summer affects not only people but also plants. Insufficient precipitation leads to the death of trees, particularly seedlings, which need frequent watering.

What is the solution?

Kyiv communal services tested tree watering bags in the Dniprovsky district, where many skyscrapers pierce the neighborhood, causing the area to be polluted.

How does it work?

The Kyiv landscapers explained that these are special 85-liter polyethylene bags for root watering of trees and shrubs, which are attached around the trunk and roots of a tree and filled with water.

Such a bag allows water to get directly to the root of the tree and maintain the moisture level of the plant.

The water flows out of it gradually over a period of 5 hours. With this, plants slowly absorb moisture, and water reaches deeper layers of the soil and saturates it.

Such irrigation minimizes the development of fungal diseases in trees and also reduces water consumption by more than 65% compared to the traditional method of irrigation.

We hope that this method will show good results and that in the future the city will introduce a type of irrigation that will be efficient and cost-effective, Kyiv communal workers say.

To make the city greener, Kyiv has adopted new standards for tree care, such as banning rejuvenation pruning.

Now only two types of pruning are allowed: formative and sanitary. Formative pruning has been limited, and now up to 35% of the total volume of the tree's crown can be cut.

The city has resumed work on filling out an online map of trees on the city's balance sheet. In April, almost 23 thousand green spaces were digitized.