How to Water Your Houseplants – The Biggest Mistake Most People Make

How to Water Your Houseplants – The Biggest Mistake Most People Make. Care Guide Download: https://houseplanthacks.com/watering My Watering Can: https://geni.us/Watering-Can In this video I’m going to show you the best way to water your indoor plants, there are a few key points that you must do to get it right and it’s crucial because correct watering is probably the most important part of keeping your houseplants happy and healthy but the simple fact is that most people get it wrong! If you’re new to the houseplant hobby it is very easy to kill your plant with kindness, it’s exciting to get a new plant and maybe you’re looking at it every day and talking to it and probably give it a little water every day to keep it happy, wrong! Bad idea little and often is probably the worst thing you can do with most houseplants, the reason is that the water won’t get deep enough down to most of the roots so it just evaporates off the surface and does nothing to hydrate the plant. If you water the leaves it may help with the humidity of the plant and keep the leaves clean but it won’t hydrate the plant, if you were desperate for a drink jumping in the shower won’t really help! The plants need the water all the way through the pot to be able to get water to all of the roots, most of the roots will grow towards the bottom of the pot and so you need to ensure the water gets all the way to the bottom, if you keep your plant on a nice wooden table or on your desk you won’t want to spill water everywhere so it’s often easier to pour a little in, what you really need to do is take your plant to the sink or outside where the water can drain right through without causing a mess and have at it! Give it more than you think, Here is a secret that many people don’t understand, you can’t over-water a plant by giving it too much water! You can overwater a plant by watering too often or letting your plant sit in water but if you have free-draining soil then you can’t give it too much, it will just drain through into your sink. If you have a particularly dry plant you can even put it in a bowl to catch the draining water and leave it for 30 minutes so that the soil can fully saturate, the plant will actually take back up the water that has drained through. Once 30 minutes is up you can remove the pot and let the excess water drain out for 5 minutes. Now you know that the water is all the way through the soil and the plant has had enough time to take up the water, this is key, the most important part is that the plant takes the water up through the roots, just putting some water in the pot is not enough. Now it is worth pointing out that many plants have different water needs, succulents, for example, need water much less often, but the rule still applies, when you water, water well and give plenty, but with a cactus, you might not give it any more water for a few months. It doesn’t need less water, just less often, I hope you get the difference. So it’s well worth looking up the water needs of your new plant so you can check if it needs more or less water, that’s why I make care guides for my new houseplants to show how much sun, water and humidity this particular plants prefers. Peace Lilly for example don’t like to be dry at all so I would water it sooner than I would my Chinese evergreen that I would allow to dry out a little in between watering but each of these plants would get a thorough watering when I do water, it’s just the period in-between that will vary. Another issue many people find difficult is watering a plant after it has dried out a little too much, the soil can become what’s called aqua-phobic and actually repel the water, so if you were just pouring a little water in and not paying attention it might run off the surface and not get absorbed into the soil at all, here is how to sort this little problem out. If you can use a fine rose for your watering can you can damp down the soil more easily, the trick is not to water the plant at this stage but just to get the surface of the soil as damp as possible, once you have done this it will be able to absorb the water much better and you can remove the fine rose and give the plant much more water and instead of running off it will go into the soil and nourish your houseplant, this is another top tip as you can think you are watering your plant but it’s just not getting the water down to the roots.