How NOT to Water Your Houseplants: 10 Plant-Saving Tips!

[Music] welcome back you guys my name is amanda and i do appreciate you guys coming and watching these videos and showing up i really really appreciate it today i wanted to talk about watering the do's and the don'ts you think watering should be easy right you get some beautiful plants and you're gonna take care of them and you just start watering them and then all of a sudden things start happening bad things start happening if you over love your plants so i'm going to talk about a few different ways that you should water and a few things you shouldn't do when you're watering your plants the first thing i want to talk about is don't just spritz your plants don't just take a little mister and mist it i don't even have a mister here that's how much i don't miss my plants but misting the leaves don't really do much it just kind of makes you feel a little bit better like gives you something to do but that action happens in the roots right you need to put the water in the roots not on the foliage it's just maybe you think you're increasing the humidity but you're kind of not because it doesn't last very long the mist doesn't last very long so misting your plants is not a way to water your plants that's the first one another thing that people do which i see a lot is a lot within my family and friends i see it they'll take a plant and they'll just they'll just do that then they're done i'm like whoa whoa back up you have to actually water the entire root ball you have to get in there and make sure every part of that plant soil has gotten water and all the way through most of the plants you're going to bring home need to have a complete watering not just a little sprinkle a little sprinkle it happens outside a little rain sprinkle but these guys aren't getting the rain they're not getting the humidity outside they need the water so water all the way through okay that's a really important thing here's something that's pretty important and it doesn't really get talked about that much is that when you put your plants in a lower light area which a lot of us have they don't use up the water as fast as they would if they're if they're sitting in a sunny spot so if you're like this fern this victoria fern does not get a lot of light and so therefore i don't give it a lot of water and i just noticed that but this is very dry this is very dry and look it's fine it's because it's not getting a lot of bright light i'm going to show you pretty dry that soil is pretty dry i'm going to soak it thoroughly so plants that are sitting in dark corners poorly lit rooms really look at the soil before you go and water it more because you're probably going to do more damage than good which means you're going to over water and you're going to kill your plants i'm not saying you're going to do it i'm trying to help you avoid killing your plants that's the whole purpose of this video another misnomer is that you have to have a watering schedule that every thursday at six o'clock in the morning or at night you go around with your watering can and you just go to town right you don't you shouldn't you shouldn't do that because some plants might need it and some plants do not want it yet so i suggest during that thursday morning or thursday evening go around with a watering can but feel your plants take note on what plants do need the water and what plants may be needed in on saturday or something but just not today so it's not a routine it isn't it's about you being in tune with your plants and touching and feeling and picking them up and probing them with your finger or or a moisture meter and yeah i'll get into that in a little bit but don't schedule just do it when you think they need it look at the leaves they give you signs they'll say i'm really suffering because i'm dehydrated then it's time to water them if you are bottom watering your plants some people call it another term i'm just not saying it because it's disgusting but if you're body bottom watering your plants don't let them sit in the water for like days because if you have them in a bowl like this string of bananas needs to in my mind it needs to be bottom water because i can't even get in there i don't know what's going in because it's there's so much vegetation on the top bottom water it let the capillary action pull the water all the way up to the top then take it out of the bowl how do you know just put your finger in there try to get just make a hole in the foliage get your finger in there and you can tell but don't let them sit there for days on end because it could be the end of days for your plant poor guys ice cubes you might have heard about using ice cubes for watering orchids and other plants i would recommend staying away from that put the ice cubes in your drink make a frozen margarita or something don't put it in your plants because it's shocking that's cold it's very very cold and the roots might just not like it and say oh i'm out of here but they can't get out of here their way of getting it out of there is dying so you don't want to kill your plants don't use ice cubes okay and plus the other thing with ice cubes is that there's not a lot of water in an ice cube did you notice that it's a little tiny bit so you're just giving your plant basically nothing so don't use ice cubes rain water rain water is so great to use if you can collect it in a cistern you can take old jugs or whatever whatever like a like a bucket collect rainwater if you can but use it right away don't store it for a couple of weeks because i've done that and it smells it starts stinking kind of depends on where you live i guess but mine was smelling and it just got funky i left it outside it started turning green so i like to use it right away when i collect it it rains a lot here in florida so i have been collecting it and the other thing i've been doing is putting a lot of the plants outside because they like it they're growing like crazy so rainwater try to use it right away like the first couple of days then toss it here's a good one this one just i get i see it a lot i see it i get a lot of questions about it i see it on social media a lot so you'll get a plant and you will over water it meaning you can't keep yourself away from the watering can and that's fine because like you just want to do your best so you'll over water your plant and then someone tells you you're doing that because the leaf tips are turning yellow and brown and it's starting to just decline then you go the opposite direction and then you underwater it so you think about the stress that that plant is going through it's been like sitting in a bog and then all of a sudden it's sitting in a desert doesn't know what to do so just when when you over water a plant originally let it dry out just enough to when it needs to be watered again just go right to the regular way of watering it and just don't go in the opposite direction i hope that makes sense but you'll you'll get more in tune with your plants as you spend more time with them and you'll see okay so there's something very very interesting about like feeling the soil right if people say and i say it a lot i feel the top inch or two of the soil and if it feels dry water it you might have to dig a little bit deeper you might have to remove the pot if you can sometimes it's a big plant and you can't and i'll get to that in a second but if you can just really start looking at the the whole amount of the soil right the whole entirety of it if it looks dark and looks like it was watered don't water it again because sometimes the top few inches of a plant looks really dry like by sight you'll walk by say oh that is dry and then you drench it that's not always the way to do it you should just look and put your finger in there or a moisture meter which i'll tell you about in a second and then really feel it throughout the entire base of that plant from top to the bottom okay because the top dries out quickly plants that are in bright light suck up a lot of water they drink a lot of water like plants like bird of paradise and fiddly figs need to be watered a lot because they should be in a brightly lit area so i like to water those plants more often because they need it and i test it and i feel it and i i look at it i stick my finger in it i just look at the leaves i look at everything and then i drench it all the way through i drench it mean meaning i go slowly i forgot to mention that don't just water your plants really quickly slowly if you're watering from the top let the water just go all the way around the plant nice and slow let it absorb because if you do it fast a lot of it runs off the side and down the side and not down the middle so you want to evenly water plants that are in bright light in low light just evenly water your plants i'm kind of scattered today i'm so sorry so the moisture meter thing can be really great with plants that are hard to get through like there's a lot of foliage on the top but you really need to kind of probe all the way around maybe four or five or six times depending on the size of the plant and go at different depths because if you just probe it the first two inches it's probably going to say it's dry so you got to get deep down in there sometimes and then you really get a better sense of how much moisture is in that soil so use the the water meter the moisture probe uh use it wisely and often in all over the plant i think that's kind of it i think those are the tips and tricks because you know there's probably more that i can't think of but i think that'll get you through if you're just getting into house plans and you're concerned that you're doing the wrong thing or and you sh and or to be told that you are doing the right thing because if your plans are doing well you're probably doing the right thing but if they're suffering a little bit you might want to take a couple of these tips and apply them to your houseplant care routine okay that's it guys if you want i have more videos that i'm putting up on plant arena on the website and it usually will pertain to something i talked about in today's video and yeah just check it out if you guys want to it's on the home page i hope you're doing well i hope you have a great week and i will see you guys on friday okay talk soon bye

Channel: PLANTERINA

Views: 494,105

Keywords: houseplants, house plants, indoor plants, low light houseplants, best plants, plants, low light plants, low, maintenance houseplants, watering indoor plants, how to water houseplants, plant care, houseplant care, indoor plant care

Id: cn6Ibs7fDDU

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020