The human tendency to over-water plants

This comes to me in right time. I recently witnessed a small miracle. There is a dragontree of quite concider able age. Its long mostly leafless branches showing that it has had chaotic life. I got it from friend who rented next door and placed it into small corridor. And then at one point I forgot about it and in the spring sometime it dropped off all leaves. I concidered it as dead. I was really frustrated -- I've killed a creature with my carelessness.

It was like this for months. And since it was quiet corner of a corridor, I forgot it again, let it sink to me and from time to time remind me to become better. I pushed away dealing with it, since my own carelessness was thrown at me and it bit as pain. Until a day, when I saw green leaves popping out of it's tips of branches again -- it's alive. I'm still not sure how it got to life again, since I didn't water it. Maybe the heat of the summer, and it was much heat, and little moisture from air. But it was my salvation.

I need to find the best place and right soil for this honorable plant and of course learn to water it. So this piece of information falls into right soil. Thank you for sharing :)

I hooked up soil moisture meters whose data is exposed in an API, which is read by an arduino board that activates micro pumps from a reservoir after a threshold (customized per plant).

My peace lily is the most low maintenance, easy growing plant I have. When it's thirsty it visibly droops, give it a quick blast and a few hours later it's perked back up.

My rosemary on the other hand, I couldn't keep it alive no matter what I tried. Full sun, partial shade, inside, outside, letting the soil dry out, moderate watering, daily watering, I tried it all and none of it helped.

We over-water because we fear the watering isn't enough, we care for the plant. Just like parents' unconditional love for their children.

But it hurts them when it's too much and it's never intentional.

From what I learned, the article has some bad tips and is overly verbose...

Do NOT let your plant sit in water over night. You need a good soil mix, which does not compress and regulates moisture. Water plenty, true, but dispose the water collected underneath the pot. Plants rely on flushing out excess salts and so on with rain (which is also why artificial watering will ruin soils in agriculture over time). Letting them sit long in the soup will disable this process and overtime the soil will kill the plant, e.g. starting with yellow-brown leaf tips.

Just put a finger in the soil to check humidity. Water when two thirds feel dry. works for most plants.

The hard part about watering plants is the "not every day; not rarely" schedule. A 3-4 days period is just shit for forming a habit.

As others have said, e.g. a dramatic plant like a Peace Lily can remind you to care for your plants. But use the finger to check the other plants to make sure they are dry enough.

Or get a snake plant (Beamtenspargel). They are really hard to kill.

One of the things this guide is missing is to consider the kind of soil you’re using. I love Haworthia, a kind of succulent. However if you try to give them the succulent soil from a big box store, your first watering (even to a bone dry soil) will likely be fatal simply because the soil will retain too much water. Plants sensitive to too much water also need soil that retains very little water, sometimes even a medium with no soil at all (also called a gritty mix)!

I can't be bothered to water different plants on different schedules, so I water everything once a week. Instead I vary the amount of water and if plants look wet I skip them for that week. Seems to work.

I use an app on my phone called Planta [1] that creates a water, fertilize, mist, clean and prune schedule for my plants which I tend to follow. You add your plants to the app, it asks a couple of questions such as which type of pot is the plant planted in and which room* is it located in.

I share the same account on the app with my wife and we can stay logged in simultaneously, which helps to keep track.

The app is only free for the watering schedule, the rest are premium features which you need to pay for.

* You can create rooms and describe the sun light exposure of those rooms.

[1] https://getplanta.com/en/about

I learned this this year when I started from zero to about 40 species of plants.

Most of them are either succulents or semi-succulents (like peperomias).

It took me some time to really understand how little water they need.

Now most my succulents and peperomias live in a substrate that is basically small rocks of which some have ability to wick and soak a little bit of water.

Once the plant is established, I put the pot with the plant in an inch of water for couple of minutes once a week and this seems to be enough for most succulents.

I thought about overwatering plants and I think this comes from me trying to be good to them. Plants need water and so by giving water I feel like I am being good to them. It takes some willpower to overcome this tendency.

An article that doesn’t only tell you what to do, but goes out of its way to explain the reasons and discusses your doubts before you even knew you had any. Well written.

Living in a Northern country with limited sunlight, I've found that generally it's best to err towards too little watering than the other way around most of the year. I've killed many plants by watering them too much in winter when there's lack of light, but most my of my plants have survived quite severe drought when I've been away during summer.

Tangential: Last year I dug out a plot of soil, put a mesh fence around and under it to keep animals out, mixed in some fertilized dirt from the hardware store with the ground soil when I put it back in, and put some assorted seeds spaced around in it (tiny hole with a few seeds, I forget my exact spacing), all allegedly planted at an acceptable time and in the right climate zone. I watered it according to what the internet said was correct, a deep soaking every 4-5 days I think.

Nothing grew but the peas. Eating those few peas felt like the scene from that Disney movie where Donald Duck is slicing one bean into nearly invisible portions for everyone.

I don't know what I did wrong but all that physical exertion for nothing has soured me on gardening a bit. This year I just gave up and threw some pre-potted plants in the ground and they all thrived but it feels like cheating.

Can anyone weigh in? Is growing from seed just something best left to real farmers?

Since I've made my raspberry pi plant watering pump my indoor plants have be growing very consistency with much bigger leaves. It's also an added bonus that I don't have to worry about my plants when I'm traveling. To make things simple the pump is directly powered by the 5v usb port. The only downside right now is that since the pump is triggered by the usb port of the pi, by default the usb power is turned off, this is achieved by turning off the entire usb controller and turning it back up using a cron job when the plants need to be watered (3secs every 3 days). There is no setting to turn off the usb controller when the pi boots by default, it can only be turned off once the pi is fully booted. This is fine as long as the pi stays running. However, since in California we've been having power outages, which cause the pi to reboot and water the plants for an extra 10 seconds or so every time.

The watering scheule isn't the nightmare, the insects are.

I'm rather busy person, yet I'm enjoying watering my plants, it is a part of being plant owner.

The only possible problem arises when I leave my house for several weeks and then intravenous droppers comes to the rescue.

I agree that watering only when the soil is completely dry is best. It's really hard to tell when that is with large plants thou. I have a massive monstera and a mid sized ficus. I can't pick these up to check their weight. Why are there no smart plant meters? Something I push into the soil and sends me a notification when the soil has completely dried out?

I've used those analog two prong moisture meters, but I'm looking for something that can just sit in the pot permanently..

If you're interested in going slightly further down the "rabbit hole" as the author alludes, check out The New Plant Parent book. That book changed the way I look at house plant care. There is no formula; you need to factor in the species as well as the light it receives + the drainage of the soil. Like cooking, there are some techniques but at the end of the day also intuition and love.

I was thinking about this as I cleaned up and managed all my backyard river rock landscaping.

I over water the front yard and porch plants, but almost forget about all the backyard plants because of the landscaping. They get watered still — it’s just they definitely look they need before I go out there.

An alternative is to use coconut coir and keep it always wet. The problem is that you have to get rid of the runoff to avoid accumulation of salts as you add fertilizer to the water. This is not practical if you're watering every day unless you have special draining saucers.

A handy tip I got from a citrus grower is to feel the leaf. If it feels cool the plant is transpiring and has enough water, otherwise give it a bit of water. Too much water and too little water both can look the same and plants wilt.

The article doesn't address grass lawns, which require ridiculous amounts of water, and seem like the more water they get, the happier they are.

You know that hydrophobia is another name for rabies?

Wonder why not add a measuring rode and advice based on data collection or just look at the rode (if no Bluetooth or WiFi :-) just a rod).

Perhaps someone can write an App that allows you to take a picture of a plant and it will tell you how much it needs water right now.

So, don’t water my plants, but if I do, I have to soak them through.

Got it.

i always water when the leaves get droopy.

[adjusts evil business marketing hat]

Soft-pitch. We buy cycles on some advanced text-to-speech service, do some ML training or whatever, and make a device that can watch your plant and then conversationally answer questions about its health esp hydration

Yes yes I know there are soil probes or whatever for $25 but I need you to have _vision_ here. Vernor Vinge's _A Fire upon the Deep_ was trending on HN this very day. It features murderous talking AI-enhanced plants. Coincidence? Ha! The market is ready.

It behooves -- BEHOOVES -- us to answer the timeless question: What if your plant was like able to talk to you, answer questions, and buy things for you that you mention in passing conversation?

Sentiment for our green children is often high, and this makes any prospective marketing and/or suggestion much stickier.

It's not an enormous corporation asking you to buy something. It's your lil buddy that you overwatered yesterday. Do it a solid. You owe it.

EXPECTED RESULT:

[reproachfully] "Excuse me, John. You've been careless with me for weeks. Might I suggest you purchase an elegant set of stainless steel professional pruning shears, available from seller ADSF for only $123.95? It would go a long way to repairing our relationship."