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The human tendency to over-water plants
- SturgeonsLaw 5y agoMy peace lily is the most low maintenance, easy growing plant I have. When it's thirsty it visibly droops, give it a quick blast and a few hours later it's perked back up. My rosemary on the other hand, I couldn't keep it alive no matter what I tried. Full sun, partial shade, inside, outside, letting the soil dry out, moderate watering, daily watering, I tried it all and none of it helped.
- staticassertion 5y agoAgreed. My peace lily is great. It wilts when it's thirsty, and otherwise it requires no maintenance. I once left it for about a month, came back, it had wilted quite a lot. I thought maybe it wouldn't recover. I watered it a normal amount and woke up to it having perked up quite a lot, and in another day it was back to normal. Definitely a plant I would recommend.
- dylan604 5y agoBe careful with lillies if you have cats.
- ericpauley 5y agoPeace lilies are not actually lilies in this sense, so aren’t especially harmful to pets[1]. [1] https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/mauna-loa-peace-lily/ https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/mauna-loa-peace-lil...
- jazzyjackson 5y agothings i didn’t expect to learn on hacker news… thanks :)
- pvaldes 5y agoSpathiphyllum belong to a pretty evil big family and are poisonous as all good Aroids are. You can expect a combination of microscopic crystal arrows tearing flesh and acid being throw in the wounds later for maximum fun. We have it indoors exactly because that (being poisonous are often left untouched by animals increasing its decorative value). Can kill a cat by asphysia perfectly but this is really unusual. Pets can eventually bite them, once, and learn fast not to do it again. The dangerous part is if they would swallow 'a chunk of burning fire'. Will not happen easily unless your dog or cat is a totally clueless idiot.
- jmspring 5y agoPeace lilies and Zebra plants both do this. At our shop, I refer to them as "drama queens" as they do let you know when they need water. Another interesting one is fittonia (or nerve plant). It recovers readily as well.
- throwaway09223 5y agoMy Fatsia Japonica does the same. Stalks will droop over and the thing will look like it has no structural integrity. Water, and tomorrow it's fine.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 5y agothe structural integrity is indeed provided by the capillary action of the plant tissue drawing up water and stiffening the stems
- infogulch 5y ago> drama queens I say the same thing about my Peace Lily. Actually, her being so dramatic trained me to water all my plants more regularly. Yes I'm admitting that I was trained by a plant lol :D
- ars 5y agoSucculents are also a good choice, they can tolerate quite a long time without water. The advice for them it let the soil dry completely, and then give a complete soak. I have mine in a semi-transparent container with no drain, so I can see the soil get darker, and I know when to stop adding water, and since there is no drain it soaks up the water well (i.e. the sponge hydrophobia the article mentions).
- colordrops 5y agoFunny, I couldn't kill my rosemary bush if I wanted to. It sits at the corner of the house without water and it grows and grows. In SoCal btw
- thebradbain 5y ago3 months ago I had a massive, overgrown 7 foot rosemary bush in my backyard drastically cut down to about 3.5 feet. It was so tall it was crushing itself under its own weight. One summer later and it’s back to around 5 feet. Also in SoCal, it gets watered maybe once a month, if that (whenever I remember). I _wish_ I could stop it.
- pvaldes 5y agoSpathiphyllum dislike cold and people messing with their roots when repotting. Apart of that they are low maintenance and also known to remove toxics like formaldehyde and trichlorethylene from the air in labs and rooms. Rosemary needs dig deep in the soil or in a big clay pot. Die in a day with their roots cooked if left in small plastic black pots. They need also full sun, but not when you buy it. Only after they develop its roots and pass the shock of being moved from a greenhouse to scorching sun. Big Rosmarinus plants have a bigger rootball and are much easier to keep alive.
- nebula8804 5y agoI got a peace lily in March after my father passed away and it has been so much trouble to keep it going. I'm really sad about it. First I didn't realize I was overwatering it and introduced root rot into the system. The online guides recommended repotting with fresh soil and carefully yanking on all the rotted roots so as to remove as much of the rotted material as possible. They also recommended a very gentle scrubbing with a tiny bit of dish soap with the expectation that the plant will be shocked for a while but recover. I did all this and it did help somewhat. Then the following months the area was very sunny with 90 degree F days. I didn't realize it at the time but I was killing the plant by overheat. 2-3 weeks of this and after realizing what was happening, I moved it into the basement near a tiny window with indirect sunlight (~69 degree F all day). This worked for a while but now as I take a step back and look at the plant, it is a mess. It is definitely still alive but does not seem healthy at all. Multiple leaves have yellowed, some have either yellow or black spots on it. All of the beautiful White Seed like things have turned pitch black and are disintegrating. I am now just not sure what to do, I just keep watering it with 1 water bottle's worth of water every three days or so but it seems like it is a mess that I can't recover from.
- sonofhans 5y agoI feel you. My son may be in this position one day. Don’t give up on it! I’ve kept multiple peace lilies in offices and homes for years. They are dramatic, but also forgiving. What you’ve done so far sounds helpful. I’d suggest: * More light, but indirect. They like well-lit rooms as long as the sun doesn’t shine on them. They do like 70º better than 90º. * Let the soil dry a little between waterings. Stick your finger in the soil to see if it’s damp. If it is, water in a few days. * It’s ok to overwater them until water runs through the pot, but be sure the pot doesn’t sit in that water. * Prune off all the dead material. The blooms always look disgusting when they die. Lastly, get it a friend or two. Get another couple peace lilies and care for them the same way. It’ll help you understand how they behave.
- elyobo 5y agoYeah, I have a balcony that's a plant kill zone (north facing high rise in Australia, so lots of sun, the odd 40 degree (100 farenheit) day, aircon outlet there pushes it up much hotter still. Peace lilies have been surviving (not thriving, but surviving) there for 8 years now, but I've tried and killed rosemary three times now. I suspect overwatering is the cause. All of these in pots, btw, because balcony - suspect that the rosemary would be easier in the ground.
- bengale 5y agoYeah I have one of these, its so overdramatic when it's thirsty.
- justshowpost 5y agoI'm rather busy person, yet I'm enjoying watering my plants, it is a part of being plant owner. The only possible problem arises when I leave my house for several weeks and then intravenous droppers comes to the rescue.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoOne of the things this guide is missing is to consider the kind of soil you’re using. I love Haworthia, a kind of succulent. However if you try to give them the succulent soil from a big box store, your first watering (even to a bone dry soil) will likely be fatal simply because the soil will retain too much water. Plants sensitive to too much water also need soil that retains very little water, sometimes even a medium with no soil at all (also called a gritty mix)!
- winkeyless 5y agoYep I too err on the dry side by using 1. Planters with several holes that I drilled 2. Soil that I mixed for better drainage A thirsty plant is better than rotten plant
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- platz 5y agoThe watering scheule isn't the nightmare, the insects are.
- jcun4128 5y agomosquito dunks
- platz 5y agoi've found springtails are nearly indestructible
- jcun4128 5y agoOn a side note, those are cool when filmed in super slow mo/close up, saw YT video
- platz 5y agohah, feast your eyes my dude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iPosKLguoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iPosKLguoU apparently these are Lepidocrytus Springtails https://bugguide.net/node/view/928438/bgimage https://bugguide.net/node/view/928438/bgimage
- jcun4128 5y agoOh damn, I actually thought they looked like silverfish I'm thinking of a different insect, it looks more like a ball/can jump really high The problem I had with my indoor garden were the gnats, so mosquito dunks killed em off My bell peppers [0] are growing hehe [0] https://i.imgur.com/jUNnWIi.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jUNnWIi.jpg
- phito 5y agoWhich is great since they are beneficial
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- etrtrc34 5y agoLiving in a Northern country with limited sunlight, I've found that generally it's best to err towards too little watering than the other way around most of the year. I've killed many plants by watering them too much in winter when there's lack of light, but most my of my plants have survived quite severe drought when I've been away during summer.
- Aeolun 5y agoKind of makes sense right? Sometimes it doesn’t rain for weeks but the plant still has to survive. Then it rains for a whole day and plant is completely soaked, still survives. I guess the biggest problem plants have is that humans want to interfere with their natural cycle :P
- pvaldes 5y agoAspidistra performs well in very low amounts of light. Can be left dry for a long time also. Except for the alien's egg shaped flowers is a little boring but is a survivor. In any case the solution if you tend to over-water can be to stop it... or to keep over-watering. Just find plants that like having their feet soaked. You can't over-water a Zantedeschia if the temperatures remain warm. If you forget it and let it dry it just will go to sleep for a while and will flower better. You can't over-water a Cyperus.
- zabzonk 5y agoYou know that hydrophobia is another name for rabies?
- ars 5y agoIt's a symptom of rabies, not a name for it. It just means "fear of water".
- jakebasile 5y agoIt's probably a pun.
- user3939382 5y agoI hooked up soil moisture meters whose data is exposed in an API, which is read by an arduino board that activates micro pumps from a reservoir after a threshold (customized per plant).
- antiSingularity 5y agoYou only killed several hundred other plants (in the form of resource extraction and refining) to do this!
- lethologica 5y agoI love the juxtaposition of the simplistic suggestions from the article vs this comment.
- cylon13 5y agoIt’s not a nightmare, I simply hook up individually customized Arduinos to every house plant!
- TeMPOraL 5y agoTotally not like turning your house plants into Borg drones.
- ximeng 5y agoCould potentially put them on motors and pick up on stress hormones to allow the plants to move to better location.
- mathstuf 5y agoReal life miniatures for this one-page RPG perhaps? https://diwatamnl.itch.io/bonsai-brawlers https://diwatamnl.itch.io/bonsai-brawlers
- cybernautique 5y ago
- ilvez 5y agoThis comes to me in right time. I recently witnessed a small miracle. There is a dragontree of quite concider able age. Its long mostly leafless branches showing that it has had chaotic life. I got it from friend who rented next door and placed it into small corridor. And then at one point I forgot about it and in the spring sometime it dropped off all leaves. I concidered it as dead. I was really frustrated -- I've killed a creature with my carelessness. It was like this for months. And since it was quiet corner of a corridor, I forgot it again, let it sink to me and from time to time remind me to become better. I pushed away dealing with it, since my own carelessness was thrown at me and it bit as pain. Until a day, when I saw green leaves popping out of it's tips of branches again -- it's alive. I'm still not sure how it got to life again, since I didn't water it. Maybe the heat of the summer, and it was much heat, and little moisture from air. But it was my salvation. I need to find the best place and right soil for this honorable plant and of course learn to water it. So this piece of information falls into right soil. Thank you for sharing :)
- contingencies 5y agoBy dragontree - do you mean Dracaena cinnabari by any chance? While there are other Dracaenas the island of Socotra where D. cinnabari was found is basically an exposed rock off the cost of Yemen ... think sun all day with little water. There's a great paragliding(?) video of the island on Youtube. Check out a native observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68966536 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68966536
- ilvez 5y agoI think it's Dracaena Marginata I have. Not 100% sure, since it totally lives outside it's normal environment in northern Europe, so it's thin and naked, so visual similarities may be deceptive. :)
- dTal 5y agoDragon trees - Dracaena marginata - are damn hard to kill. If they don't have water, they don't die - they just stop growing. I actually let a weed grow in the pot of mine because the weed responded much more dramatically to soil conditions. Like all plants, however, they do need sunlight. Is your corridor well lit?
- tgv 5y agoAn article that doesn’t only tell you what to do, but goes out of its way to explain the reasons and discusses your doubts before you even knew you had any. Well written.
- danhodgins 5y agoOverwatering is one of the biggest mistakes made by beginners. You can usually underwater, and add more later as required. This especially applies to succulents. If you're interested in learning more about plants and gardening head over to: http://thesassyplant.com http://thesassyplant.com and check out our fun, sassy and irreverent gardening community.
- hetspookjee 5y agoI find it somewhat odd you post this exact comment underneath the article as well. Feels like a shameless plug advertisement.
- quickthrower2 5y agoYou are a spammer! I see your comment history a lot of them are a quick comment then “check out this site”
- ajuc 5y agoI can't be bothered to water different plants on different schedules, so I water everything once a week. Instead I vary the amount of water and if plants look wet I skip them for that week. Seems to work.
- elisom78 5y agoThis is really a problem, watering the plants is strange to me. Of course, I try to make a schedule and water the plants for example once a week, or depending on what the flower looks like. But since all flowers need a different amount of water, the schedule changes and I start to forget to do it.
- db1 5y agoI agree that watering only when the soil is completely dry is best. It's really hard to tell when that is with large plants thou. I have a massive monstera and a mid sized ficus. I can't pick these up to check their weight. Why are there no smart plant meters? Something I push into the soil and sends me a notification when the soil has completely dried out? I've used those analog two prong moisture meters, but I'm looking for something that can just sit in the pot permanently..
- seszett 5y agoThere are, like the Xiaomi Mi Flora sensor (I think) or something like April Brother soil moisture sensor. I have given up on those though because they're to expensive to put in every pot, and if they're not in every pot then I might as well manually check all the pots.
- grozzle 5y agothe two prong ones are resistive, and the exposed metal does indeed corrode quite quickly when in use. there's also a single-prong capacitive type, only very marginally more expensive, with all metal parts covered in plastic film, which can sit in the soil indefinitely.
- bklaasen 5y agoA convenient prong you can push into the soil is your finger - if it comes out with soil particles stuck to it, the plant doesn't need watering.
- db1 5y agoI do that quite a bit, but I have pots which are 12 inches deep. I want to know when the bottom has dried out.
- sseagull 5y agoMoisture meters aside, I use plants as an example of the “expert problem”. Experts give advice that seems helpful, but only if you have intuition already. “Completely dry” (or “plant is not hefty”) is not helpful to a beginner. There is basically a continuum of dryness, and with large plants, there’s a gradient as well (as you mention). Paraphrased conversation I have had: “How much should I water this plant?” “Some, but not too much” See also: cooking
- lmilcin 5y agoI learned this this year when I started from zero to about 40 species of plants. Most of them are either succulents or semi-succulents (like peperomias). It took me some time to really understand how little water they need. Now most my succulents and peperomias live in a substrate that is basically small rocks of which some have ability to wick and soak a little bit of water. Once the plant is established, I put the pot with the plant in an inch of water for couple of minutes once a week and this seems to be enough for most succulents. I thought about overwatering plants and I think this comes from me trying to be good to them. Plants need water and so by giving water I feel like I am being good to them. It takes some willpower to overcome this tendency.
- unobatbayar 5y agoWe over-water because we fear the watering isn't enough, we care for the plant. Just like parents' unconditional love for their children. But it hurts them when it's too much and it's never intentional.
- cataphract 5y agoAn alternative is to use coconut coir and keep it always wet. The problem is that you have to get rid of the runoff to avoid accumulation of salts as you add fertilizer to the water. This is not practical if you're watering every day unless you have special draining saucers.
- Aeolun 5y agoSo, don’t water my plants, but if I do, I have to soak them through. Got it.
- del_operator 5y agoI was thinking about this as I cleaned up and managed all my backyard river rock landscaping. I over water the front yard and porch plants, but almost forget about all the backyard plants because of the landscaping. They get watered still — it’s just they definitely look they need before I go out there.
- markenqualitaet 5y agoFrom what I learned, the article has some bad tips and is overly verbose... Do NOT let your plant sit in water over night. You need a good soil mix, which does not compress and regulates moisture. Water plenty, true, but dispose the water collected underneath the pot. Plants rely on flushing out excess salts and so on with rain (which is also why artificial watering will ruin soils in agriculture over time). Letting them sit long in the soup will disable this process and overtime the soil will kill the plant, e.g. starting with yellow-brown leaf tips. Just put a finger in the soil to check humidity. Water when two thirds feel dry. works for most plants. The hard part about watering plants is the "not every day; not rarely" schedule. A 3-4 days period is just shit for forming a habit. As others have said, e.g. a dramatic plant like a Peace Lily can remind you to care for your plants. But use the finger to check the other plants to make sure they are dry enough. Or get a snake plant (Beamtenspargel). They are really hard to kill.
- syndacks 5y agoIf you're interested in going slightly further down the "rabbit hole" as the author alludes, check out The New Plant Parent book. That book changed the way I look at house plant care. There is no formula; you need to factor in the species as well as the light it receives + the drainage of the soil. Like cooking, there are some techniques but at the end of the day also intuition and love.
- jimmaswell 5y agoTangential: Last year I dug out a plot of soil, put a mesh fence around and under it to keep animals out, mixed in some fertilized dirt from the hardware store with the ground soil when I put it back in, and put some assorted seeds spaced around in it (tiny hole with a few seeds, I forget my exact spacing), all allegedly planted at an acceptable time and in the right climate zone. I watered it according to what the internet said was correct, a deep soaking every 4-5 days I think. Nothing grew but the peas. Eating those few peas felt like the scene from that Disney movie where Donald Duck is slicing one bean into nearly invisible portions for everyone. I don't know what I did wrong but all that physical exertion for nothing has soured me on gardening a bit. This year I just gave up and threw some pre-potted plants in the ground and they all thrived but it feels like cheating. Can anyone weigh in? Is growing from seed just something best left to real farmers?
- Fezzik 5y agoMost recreational gardeners I know that grow from seeds, including myself, start the seeds inside and then plant them outside. That doesn’t explain your initial lack of plant growth, but it is a useful technique.
- justshowpost 5y agoWell, growing seeds definitely requires more efforts and care, for instance I had 3 or 4 failed attempts with extremely vulnerable tobacco seed, which was very counter-intuitive since adult plants are quite sturdy. Pea seeds are ultra-sturdy, that's why you succeed. BTW, seeds would like to have some assistance, like soaking them before planting, then planting them at fake soil (eg. wet cotton wool) Also, I highly recommend peat bricks for seedlings like https://www.growbarato.net/24393-large_default/peat-foam-ecological-foam.jpg https://www.growbarato.net/24393-large_default/peat-foam-eco...
- rdtwo 5y agoPre soak is not nessisary or often helpful. I think https://www.gardenmyths.com/ https://www.gardenmyths.com/ had an article on that at some point
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- amelius 5y agoPerhaps someone can write an App that allows you to take a picture of a plant and it will tell you how much it needs water right now.
- HeadlessChild 5y agoI use an app on my phone called Planta [1] that creates a water, fertilize, mist, clean and prune schedule for my plants which I tend to follow. You add your plants to the app, it asks a couple of questions such as which type of pot is the plant planted in and which room* is it located in. I share the same account on the app with my wife and we can stay logged in simultaneously, which helps to keep track. The app is only free for the watering schedule, the rest are premium features which you need to pay for. * You can create rooms and describe the sun light exposure of those rooms. [1] https://getplanta.com/en/about https://getplanta.com/en/about
- randyrand 5y agoi always water when the leaves get droopy.
- undoware 5y ago[adjusts evil business marketing hat] Soft-pitch. We buy cycles on some advanced text-to-speech service, do some ML training or whatever, and make a device that can watch your plant and then conversationally answer questions about its health esp hydration Yes yes I know there are soil probes or whatever for $25 but I need you to have _vision_ here. Vernor Vinge's _A Fire upon the Deep_ was trending on HN this very day. It features murderous talking AI-enhanced plants. Coincidence? Ha! The market is ready. It behooves -- BEHOOVES -- us to answer the timeless question: What if your plant was like able to talk to you, answer questions, and buy things for you that you mention in passing conversation? Sentiment for our green children is often high, and this makes any prospective marketing and/or suggestion much stickier. It's not an enormous corporation asking you to buy something. It's your lil buddy that you overwatered yesterday. Do it a solid. You owe it. EXPECTED RESULT: [reproachfully] "Excuse me, John. You've been careless with me for weeks. Might I suggest you purchase an elegant set of stainless steel professional pruning shears, available from seller ADSF for only $123.95? It would go a long way to repairing our relationship."
- soheil 5y agoSince I've made my raspberry pi plant watering pump my indoor plants have be growing very consistency with much bigger leaves. It's also an added bonus that I don't have to worry about my plants when I'm traveling. To make things simple the pump is directly powered by the 5v usb port. The only downside right now is that since the pump is triggered by the usb port of the pi, by default the usb power is turned off, this is achieved by turning off the entire usb controller and turning it back up using a cron job when the plants need to be watered (3secs every 3 days). There is no setting to turn off the usb controller when the pi boots by default, it can only be turned off once the pi is fully booted. This is fine as long as the pi stays running. However, since in California we've been having power outages, which cause the pi to reboot and water the plants for an extra 10 seconds or so every time.
- chris1993 5y agoA handy tip I got from a citrus grower is to feel the leaf. If it feels cool the plant is transpiring and has enough water, otherwise give it a bit of water. Too much water and too little water both can look the same and plants wilt.
- Imagenuity 5y agoThe article doesn't address grass lawns, which require ridiculous amounts of water, and seem like the more water they get, the happier they are.
- ngcc_hk 5y agoWonder why not add a measuring rode and advice based on data collection or just look at the rode (if no Bluetooth or WiFi :-) just a rod).