7 ms·
I once agreed to take care of a friend's plant while they were overseas - it was a terrifying day-to-day experience. Don't ask your friends to look after a pla
by bspn 9y ago
I once agreed to take care of a friend's plant while they were overseas - it was a terrifying day-to-day experience. Don't ask your friends to look after a plant.
- barbs 9y agoHow so?
- thephyber 9y agosarcasm? It's tough to take care of a human infant or a puppy. It's extremely easy to care for a fish or a plant. Then again, some people can't even be responsible for themselves.
- pitaj 9y agoThe problem with plant caring is that dogs and babies with respond to you, ask for food or water, cry, etc. Plants have a long response time and by the time you see leaves curling or turning colors, it could be too late.
- kaybe 9y agoI think the problem happens when you don't know the plant. I also have some trouble until I know how the plant looks when it's happy and how it changes when it's not. It's a very small difference in some cases, but if you look at it every day you just.. know after some time. Apart from the supposedly easy one I have that is always unhappy no matter what I do. And yet it refuses to die, it only.. almost dies. For years now.
- bspn 9y agoNo, it was genuinely stressful! I forget the name of the plant now, but too much sun and it would die. Too little sun, same result. Move it the wrong way and, yep you guessed it, death. And that's before we even get to the watering requirements!
- flukus 9y agoYou sure your friends weren't joking? This sounds like a "ask for tartan paint" style joke that get's played on interns/apprentices.
- seszett 9y agoIt sounds like many plants that are not common house plants, actually. The first that comes to my mind is cacao, for example, or many orchids too.
- mehrdada 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyfwZVAzGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyfwZVAzGw
- Spare_account 9y agoWe have one plant in our household, no other plants have survived. It lives in my living room and I have no idea what kind of plant it is. It had long thin leaves, each one is about 10 to 15cm long and 1cm wide and long thin woody stems. We water it randomly, at one stage we estimate we forgot to water it for around 6 months. Other times due to a lack of communication we have both watered it multiple times in a week. It appears to be invulnerable to poor watering discipline. Currently it is living in direct sunlight but it has lived in permanent shade for a extended period as well. I don't know why I'm telling you this, it probably doesn't help knowing that your friends has high maintenance plants when there are invincible ones like ours in the world as well.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoAre you sure it's a real one and not plastic?
- felipemnoa 9y agoThis is an excellent observation/question and hilarious at the same time. It could be plastic. I've seen trees in malls with plastic leafs were I had to actually try to rip a leaf to make sure that it was real since they looked so real.
- notyourwork 9y agoDon't generalize fish and plants, they are all not that easy to care for. I grow aquatic plants and raise lots of aquatic species, none of which are that simple.
- eljimmy 9y agoI don't know about that. My friend tried to care for a couple Bonsai trees and they did not do too great. Researching after the fact, we discovered that some species are notoriously difficult to care for.
- UntitledNo4 9y agoAs someone with plants and with a friend who looks after them when we're away, I understand this completely. Plants need a schedule to do well and some are very sensitive if they get too much or too little water too often or too late. A two or three of our plants died while the friend was looking after them in the past due to under watering (and we were gone for only about a week every time). So last time when we came back we found most pots were flooded with water, which to most plants is just as bad as not being watered. It's only now that I think about how this small favour we ask of our friend can be stressful to him.
- GuiA 9y agoWhat plants die in under a week of slight negligence?
- King-Aaron 9y agoThe answer you're after is: "many"
- mcv 9y agoBut who would buy a plant like that? I get liking plants, but I don't want their maintenance to be yet another painful chore. I want plants that survive no matter what I do. Fortunately, my plants seem to select themselves based on that criterium.
- trentmb 9y agoHobbyists.
- scandinavegan 9y agoI have an uncle who waters all his plants every Saturday. Those who survive stay, those who die are tossed. Survival of the fittest in action.
- hrktb 9y agoIf you have this line of thinking I think you’ll already be looking at a watering system, or even simple pots with a water reserve. Your needs for friends looking after your plants will already be minimal, and be reduced to asking them to fill the tanks once every three or four weeks. For me people who need to educate friends about how to deal with their plants are playing on a different field, in a different game altogether (and I’ll flat refuse to deal with kind of PITA)
- Yizahi 9y agoWe often ask a relatives to water plants, they just come in twice during 2 weeks and water them, not a rocket science really. No dead plants yet.
- wackro 9y agoTry that with bonsai
- Yizahi 9y agoTrue that. We didn't even manage a bonsai by ourselves.
- deforciant 9y agoYep, same here. Bought a bonsai, fertiliser and tiny scissors for the little fella. Didn't even last a month under my management. I wonder what kind of care those trees require. Now I just opted for a few cactuses, they seem fine.