BOTTOM vs TOP Watering 💧 How To Water Indoor Plants Correctly 🌱 Houseplant 101

[Music] hello everyone welcome back to my channel if you're new here hi my name's claire and this is yoli and today we're going to be going through how to water and how not to water your house plants in order to keep them happy and healthy i was actually going to film a completely different video today but when i was going through and planning that one i realized how much there kind of was to go through specifically on watering so i thought i would do this video first so yeah here we are this subject might seem really obvious to a lot of people but a lot of the most common houseplant issues actually come from a watering imbalance so i'm going to take you through some of the areas where people tend to go a little bit wrong debunk some common watering myths and show you how i water my plants it's so so common to get a new plant that looks really healthy really great and then you bring it home and as soon as you start to water it bad things start to happen wow that was a dramatic bird and then you panic and you try and fix it without really knowing what's caused it and before you know it that plant can go downhill die pretty fast the most important thing to say straight away is that obviously different types of house plants are going to require different amounts of water so some will enjoy an evenly moist soil at all times meaning you have to water more often sometimes multiple times a week and others will enjoy a much drier soil some even enjoy the soil to completely dry out between waterings so if you don't know don't just guess instead of sticking to a strict watering schedule i would personally always recommend researching your type of plant finding out what kind of soil moisture it likes whether it likes to dry out between waterings or not stuff like that and then monitoring the soil and going off this this is just because if two people buy the exact same type of plants both take at home being told that the guideline watering is for example once a week and one person's got a really bright warm home and the other person's got a colder darker home then those plants aren't going to be ready for a drink at the same time if that makes sense does that make sense you can buy things called moisture meters to help you tell how dry or moist the soil is which can be really useful at helping you tell when you should or shouldn't water i personally just stick my finger a few inches down to the soil and feel but if you don't always trust your own judgment then moisture meters are an option if you're like me and have lots of house plants something i find really helpful is actually grouping together plants that have similar watering and lighting needs it just makes life slightly easier for example i've got my snake plants echeverias and succulent euphorbias all grouped together because i know that they all like their soil to pretty much completely dry out between waterings so if i give them all a really deep water on tuesday why tuesday i don't know and then two three weeks later i realized that the soil is really dry on one then chances are all of them are ready for a water you can actually tell when some plants are ready for a drink just by looking at their leaves they'll often start to curl droop look slightly dehydrated so if this is happening and you haven't watered recently then chances are that's just their way of telling you that they're thirsty something that's always asked a lot is whether top watering or bottom watering is better for houseplants for anyone that doesn't know bottom watering is where you put your plant into a container and fill that container up slightly with water so that it essentially feeds directly up from the roots instead of the conventional method of pouring water down on top of the soil i personally have slightly mixed feelings about bottom watering that i've briefly touched on before but i'll sum up some of the pros and cons some of the benefits of bottom watering are firstly it's really quick and easy especially if you've got lots of plants you can just fill up the bath fill up a container with a bit of water plonk your plants into it go away for an hour or so and when you come back the watering's done for you it also tends to be less messy than conventional watering because it can all be contained in one area instead of having to go around each individual plant and water it when you bottom water it also tends to be slightly harder to over water just because the roots will only absorb the water that they need instead of having lots of water forced onto them unless of course you leave it satin water for too long or bottom water too often when your plant isn't ready for a drink yet but yeah i know a lot of people use bottom watering all the time never use conventional top watering and think it's great in my opinion and this is just my opinion don't come at me please but i personally think it's fine to use this method from time to time but if it's all you ever do then chances are your plant isn't going to be growing as healthily as it should be i actually did a little experiment a while ago to back this up which is slightly sad i know but i was interested to see the difference so i'll talk about that in a minute top watering is the conventional watering method that everybody knows where you literally just water your plants as normal pour water onto the soil from above when you water from the top you're not only pushing water down into the soil but a layer of oxygen too that your plants need to survive without this oxygen over time the roots of your plants are going to suffer and the soil is going to become a lot more dense and compact watering from above and allowing this to be pushed down improves the aeration of the soil basically meaning that your plant's roots can breathe better and it makes them slightly less susceptible to issues such as root rot another reason i like to use normal top watering the majority of the time is because it helps to flush any unnecessary toxins out of the soil over time it's really common to get a buildup of salts and minerals in the soil that can collect around the plant's roots meaning that they're actually not able to absorb the water and nutrients they need effectively this buildup can come from fertilizing but it can also just be due to the chemicals found in tap water by watering from the top you're actually flushing through the soil every time you water helping to get rid of all the bad stuff so the roots of your plants stay healthy and able to absorb everything they need i'm not saying bottom watering is bad i do it myself sometimes when i don't have time to go around and top water every single plant i'm just saying that i think it's important to strike a balance so they're not just getting fed from the bottom all the time the other reason bottom watering can be slightly hit or miss is just because if your plant's roots aren't that well established yet they might not be able to absorb all the water they need so my experiment when i was at my old place i just randomly decided to do this to see if it would make any difference at all i had two rubber plants that were pretty much identical they were both exactly the same size they were in the same soil their conditions were exactly the same so same light same heat same humidity they were growing at exactly the same rate but i thought it would be fun i thought it'd be great fun to see what would happen if i just top-watered one and just bottom-watered the other i hadn't even thought about starting jungle haven or youtube or anything like that back then so really really really annoyingly i didn't think to photo track the progress which is so frustrating now because it would have been so perfect for this video but hey um so after about four or five months what i noticed is the one that i was top watering it really overtook the one that i was bottom watering in terms of growth it just became a lot taller a lot fuller the one that i was bought and watering was fine as well like it didn't stop growing it's just that compared to the other one it slowed right down and the growth that it was producing was a lot smaller i know this can be partly down to the genetics of the plants but besides the fact they were growing at exactly the same rate before this came after a period where i'd been fertilizing a lot so i kind of thought maybe it was because the one that was being bottom watered wasn't getting all the chemical mineral salt build up flushed away in the same way as the other one after a while as well i noticed that the one that i'd been bottom watering soil had become more dense and compact and less airy i don't actually know if i'd have noticed that if i hadn't been comparing it to the other one but it almost looked like it had shrunk slightly in the pot even though they were planted in identical soils in their natural habitat plants will obviously receive water that's come from above filtered down through the soil and absorbed that way so i personally always just try to keep things as natural as i possibly can another area where people can often go wrong with watering is when they spritz or mist the soil instead of actually drenching it through even if you're spritzing the soil a lot or lightly watering quite often chances are it's not actually getting down into the full root system of the plants meaning that your plant isn't able to absorb all of the water that it needs which can lead to lots of issues like browning leaves drooping leaves curling leaves falling leaves plant death yeah you should just deep water guys the way i water all of my plants even if they're plants that don't need a huge amount of water very often is i'll thoroughly soak the soil through making sure all areas of the soil are drenched until water comes out for the drainage holes the only ways you can actually go wrong with doing this is if you don't allow your plant enough time to properly drain afterwards or you do it when your plant isn't ready to be watered yet i've said it before as well but using a pot with drainage holes is so so so important i literally keep all of my plants in nursery pots like that or in terra potter pots and just think of the pretty pots as pot covers the great thing about terracotta pots is that terracotta is a breathable material so it essentially allows water to pass through it so if you know that you're slightly prone to over watering using terracotta pots can be a really brilliant way to help regulate this another thing i've spoken about before is the type of water you use to water your plants a lot of house plants will be absolutely fine with just normal tap water but depending on where you live if you live in a town or a city or somewhere where the water's a lot more treated some plants can really suffer over time calatheas for example can be really really sensitive to lots of things but particularly to the treatment chemicals in tap water when i was living in london a few years back i noticed such a difference in them and not in a good way when i was watering them with tap water by using distilled bottled filtered or the cheapest option rain water you can make sure that your sensitive plants aren't absorbing any unnecessary chemicals i used to always try and use either distilled or rain water for pretty much all of my house plants but to be honest nowadays i only do that for my really sensitive ones like calatheas you can also just leave tap water out to stand for 24 hours before you water it just because that allows it time for all the chlorine and oh hello allows it time for the chlorine and stuff like that to evaporate that's something i actually tried to do for pretty much all of my plants it sounds like loads of effort but it's just the case of either filling your watering can a day earlier or what i tend to do is every time i finish watering i'll fill my watering can up and just leave it there for next time the last thing that i'll say that i've said a million times before and i don't really know how i've made it this far through the video without saying it yet is that under-watering is always better than watering are you off again did you tip did you sit she always just fell off the sofa hello what are you doing no no no no you're gonna have to go that way you're going to have to go that way unless you want to stay here with me 99 of the time it's so much easier to save a plant that's been underwatered as opposed to over watered over watering can lead to loads of issues such as root rot stem rot molds fungus lots of horrible things just to clarify as well when i say underwatering i don't mean the same thing as light watering that i spoke about earlier in the video by underwatering i basically mean when you water giving your plant the exact same amount as you always would but doing that less frequently if anyone's having any watering issues or has any questions then feel free to comment them down below and i'll do my best to help i really hope this video was useful if it was please make sure to give it a thumbs up subscribe to my channel have a lovely day and i'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: The Jungle Haven

Views: 11,064

Keywords: the jungle haven, bottom vs top watering, how to water plants, watering house plants, houseplant 101, bottom watering plants, bottom watering succulents, bottom watering vs top watering, bottom watering monstera, bottom watering fiddle leaf fig, bottom watering plants how long, how to water orchids, how to water succulents, how to water indoor plants, how to water aloe vera plants, how to water orchids indoors, watering jade plant, watering my plants, watering houseplants

Id: o5frtzl0tq0

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021