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| Photo Credit: Diane Mays |
| Use the color of your potting media as a good visual indicator for when to water. (The darker media on the right has just been watered.) |
About once a month I’m asked that age-old burning question, “How often should I water my houseplants?” Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as simple as “once a week.” But fear not. With just a few guidelines, you’ll be watering like a pro!
It‘s a very rare occurrence when all of the plants in your house need to be watered at the same time. Although this is a convenient approach to watering, it’s most likely how the habit of overwatering starts. So each time you break out that watering can, avoid watering all of your plants simultaneously, and treat every plant individually. Check how wet each plant’s media is before deciding whether it needs watering. Due to the power of gravity, media dries out from the top of the pot and continues down toward the roots. To check moisture level, look at the color of the media’s surface. Typically dry media is lighter in color than wet media. Next check the weight of the plant. Water adds weight to media, so a heavier plant means wetter media. And lastly, feel how wet the media is. Stick your finger down into the media an inch or two to assess its moisture content. Now that you know what your plant’s moisture level is, what’s next? Since different types of houseplants, or species, prefer different media moisture levels (depending on their root systems’ requirements), the following moisture-level categories aim to make your watering decisions easier. They are “wet,” “moist,” “somewhat moist,” “somewhat dry” and “dry.” Plants that require a “wet” media mean that the surface of the media should never be allowed to dry out between waterings. Some examples of plants that prefer a wet root environment are bog plants, like the pitcher plant and Venus fly trap, as well as aquatic plants, such as water hyacinths and cyperus.
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