Different ways to check the soil for moisture

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to swedish plant guys how do we know when we need to water our plants that is a huge question and one that we get so often well one way is of course by looking at the plant usually when you have yellow leaves on a plant when when the leaves turn yellow you've given it too much water or if the leaves turn brown and just are dry or if if the plant starts to wilter a little bit then of course it is dry instead but if you want to know how moist your soil is i have four tips for you how to do that now if you haven't subscribed yet please do and hit the bell as well so you get a notification every time we put up something new if you like this video please give it a thumbs up that really helps us a lot and subscribe and like us on facebook and instagram where you can get sneak previews on upcoming videos and sometimes a little bit more starting off with number one literally number one and that is of course use your fingers if you read about plants if you watch videos about plants you will get to this point all the time everybody will tell you if you want to know how moist the soil is use your fingers what does that mean well it's quite simple the skin on your fingers is an extremely sensitive moisture meter it's probably the best moisture meter you will ever have because it directly sends out to your brain if something is moist and if it's dry so by using your finger and just feeling the top of the soil like this you can easily know that okay it's still like this plant here it's still quite moist or even a little bit wet well then you know you probably don't have to give it any water now depending on what type of a plant you have if you have a plant that wants to dry out completely you could have to push down your fingers into the soil and if you have a plant that needs to dry out completely then i recommend you to at least push your fingers down around one to two inches down into the soil and really feel if it's moist or if it's dry before you give any water but if you have a plant that just like most plants just wants to dry out a little bit in between your watering then usually it's enough just to feel the top of the soil or just to push down your finger half an inch or maybe one inch to feel if you need to give it more water now another thing is that you can usually also look at the soil when you feel the soil you can also use your eyes and see does the soil look wet or does it look dry that is also a very very easy way to see especially if you have a soil that is a standard potting soil you can actually see and feel if it's wet or if it's dry number two weight water waste as we all know and when you've watered your plant it actually gets heavier and this is a very common thing that we use when we're out and watering our plants it's just to pick it up and feel the weight of it if you've done this as we have for over 20 years i can just pick up a plant like this and feel the weight of it and say okay it's dry or no it doesn't want any water because it's still wet and especially if you have a self-watering container now if you want to go one step further you could even weigh your plant if you have a plant on your windowsill in the kitchen and you have a some form of a kitchen scale you could just easily put it on the scale and see but then of course you have to do the measurements before you have to know that when it's completely dry weigh it and see how much it weighs then give it some water weigh it again and then you know the difference in weight so when you know that you can just easily put it on the scale and see okay it's not completely dry yet i need to water it now the third way is a very simple easy way it's it has been done like this for centuries and that is just to instead of using your fingers because if you have a lot of plants that can be quite stressful for your fingers so another way is just to use a wooden stick but you need to make sure that your stick doesn't have any lacquer or finish on it because that will affect this the outcome of this so make sure that you just have i have a smaller skewer here that is used for cooking you can use this stick because it is a bare wooden stick and just by taking this stick putting it into the soil like this or into the roots down to the roots and just leaving it there for maybe five or ten minutes then taking it up again you will see if it is still moist or if it's dry down by the roots and as you can see in this one this is quite wet not only can i see that a lot of the wet soil is sticking to the wooden stick here you can also see a difference in color on the stick so if it's really wet it would change color but if it's dry if we take another stick and push it down to a plant that is a little bit drier i have one here if i push that down for the same amount of time as i did with that one but i want you to have it down at least five to ten minutes i take this up again like that well this is also a little bit moist but i can also see that i actually punctured one of the tubers of the cc plant here so that is why it is very very moist at the tip here but it is not as moist as the ficus i just tried on the other sticks so this is just a very very simple way for you to make sure if it's time to water or not just use a wooden stick so tip number four is to use technology now what i mean by that is to buy a moisture meter now there are different types of moisture meters and how accurate they are i have one here that is one of the simplest to buy it costs around eight dollars or 80 swedish kroner uh which is not a lot so most of you can afford this and use it in your home but you need to know a couple of things with a moisturizer like this now this one only shows you dry what is it dry moist and wet we have that on a scale there so depending on how wet the soil is this meter is going to go up towards wet and if it is wet it will go all the way so this is just an easy way as well just stick it into the soil and read this dial here and we'll try it here and see we have one here that i know is really really wet or moist let's see how it reacts [Music] so the dial goes up to wet directly which which i already knew but it is really really wet now when using a moisture meter like this there are a couple of things that you need to consider one is that if you want as accurate measurements as possible make measurements on more than one place place it here place it there place it there so you know that because the soil here can actually be unevenly moist you can have air pockets and if you hit that air pockets down in the soil with this meter it will not give you an accurate measurement so make sure to make multiple measurements on the same plant and also when you've used this or when you're using it make sure to dry it off in between measurements and when you've done using this because you never want to keep it in the soil it will break down and not work anymore so when you're taking it out and you're done measuring for that day you need to dry it out completely wash it off with some water and use usually you get this with your moisture meter this is just some small sandpaper and use that to make sure that you don't have any soil left on this probe this probe is made out of copper so you want this to be as sensitive as possible and over a long period of time this will get more and more dull if you do not do this if you dry it off completely and use sandpaper to just see to it that it goes back to zero every time now another time when a probe like this or when a moisture meter will not work is if you have a lot of salt in your pot now why would you have salt in your pot well when you fertilize your plants when you add fertilizer to the water and you water your plants you're actually adding salt the nutrition there is in salt form so if you have too much nutrition or over a long period of time you have a salt buildup in your pot that will make this well basically useless because salt affects this meter here so that is why we rarely use one of these because you're not quite sure that you always get an accurate measurement i personally think that a normal wooden stick actually works better than relying on this to work because you have a lot of steps you make you have to make sure it's clean you have to make sure that it's at zero every every time and you still don't know if it's giving you an accurate meeting and another thing is that we use promise for almost anything and i know there are people using leica and using perlite and other potting mediums this uses this is best for normal potting soil it actually starts to be not accurate as soon as you go over to other types of potting mediums like pumice for instance so if you are using anything other than normal potting soil we recommend you to just use the wooden stick method the weight meth method or just using your fingers or looking at the potting medium but this is a great tool if you have the stamina to make sure that it's clean and is working as it should all the time so to summarize we have four different ways of checking the moisture in your soil now finger is of course one of the best methods but if you have a lot of plants that can be a very hard strain on your fingers so what we recommend you to do is just use wooden sticks it's simple it's easy it works every time but if you want to go up a notch and you can use a a soil moisture meter instead if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet please do hit the bell as well so you get a notification every time we put up something new now like and subscribe us on instagram and facebook where you can get sneak previews on upcoming videos and sometimes just a little bit more now until next time hide

Channel: Swedish Plantguys

Views: 36,780

Keywords: stick, plantcare, plants, moisture, meter, level, indicator, soil, wet, dry, right, best way to check, swedish plant guys, Swedish, testing, the best, ultimate, care of, indoor plant, planting in soil, caring, finger tips, finger, check for moisture, god watering, best way to water your plant, moisturing, Houseplant

Id: pXyRVN_I4Q8

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020