How to Water Plants When on Holiday

If you are one of the lucky ones who has a holiday trip ready, we congratulate you, but have you thought about what you will do with your plants? Being several days or even weeks away from home can imply a disaster for our plants since, depending on your species, being so long without irrigation or care can be fatal, especially in the hot summer months and the coldest months of winter. Here, we will teach you how to water plants when on holiday so you can save yourself from having to ask anyone to attend them for you.

How to water plants when on holiday?

There are several ways to water your plants without being present. Some of them are self-watering pots, drip cones or gelled water, although we will focus on home irrigation systems to water plants on vacations that can be easily used. We will focus on these three for being the most practical.

Water the plants on vacation with a cord

Watering plants with wool or cord is one of the best known and used tricks for this situation and, in addition, it is very easy to prepare. You just need to follow these steps:

Place a container full of water near the plants you will water. It is important that the container is above the planters, so you can place it on some support that keeps it high.
Take shoelaces or long pieces of string or wool and place the end of each of them sunk in the water, trying to reach the bottom of the container, and the other sides buried in the substrate of the pots to water, near the roots.
The cord will absorb moisture, the earth will absorb which at the rate that each plant needs.

Home Drip Irrigation

Another irrigation option for holiday plants is the well-known drip irrigation. Follow these instructions and you will see that it is very easy to achieve:

Take a large plastic bottle or container and make some very small holes in one of its faces. It must be holes the size of the head of a fine needle, so you can use one to make them.
Now you just have to bury the bottle next to the plant you want to water, with the holes facing it. Leave it full of water and it will soak the earth drop by drop through the holes made.
If the plant to be irrigated does not require large amounts of water, you can also limit yourself to placing the perforated container on the ground without burying it, but keep in mind that in this case the drops will simply slide to the surface soil, and you will need to practice the holes in the base.

Inverted bottle to water the plants

If your plants need a lot of water or resist moisture well and you will not be out for many days, another method is the inverted bottle system for irrigation:

Choose a narrow neck bottle.
Fill it with water.
Bury it upside down in the pot to water, trying to bury enough part so it stays well stuck.

Keep in mind that using this system implies that the land receives a greater amount of water, so the irrigation will run out sooner and the land will get wet. Therefore, it is not advisable to use an inverted bottle system with plants vulnerable to fungal attack for excess moisture.

Care for plants on vacation – tips

There are other measures that you can take into account to ensure that your plants are in the best position when you return. Follow these tips to take care of plants on vacation.

One of the most important is to gather all the plants in the same room in an area where you can protect the plants from excessive cold and heat. For this, I advise a dry room with the blind half-raised so that some light enters, but there is no direct incidence. Try not to give strong air currents, which are very harmful to some species.

It is also highly recommended to leave your plants in a state as optimal as you can, so remove any traces of dried leaves or stems. You can even perform a small sanitation pruning, which will help reduce the water consumption of your plants.

In addition, a preventive insecticide treatment could save you scares when you return. If any of your plants are attacked by a specific pest, take action before it happens, or when you come back, it could be too late. Most pests can be fought with organic and organic remedies, so you may not need to resort to chemicals.

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