hi everyone it's marianne
and welcome to My Wasteless Life
in this video let's talk about
everything we need to know about
watering our houseplants
thank you so much for joining me today
and if you're new this is My Wasteless Life
where i take you along my plant journey
and share with you some of my beginner tips and tricks
on houseplants and sustainable lifestyle
our house plants basically need two
things to survive: light and water
they need it for photosynthesis
for nutrient transfer and for transpiration
water is also a source of oxygen
for the roots of our plants
and there are things that we need to consider when watering our plants
the type of plants that we have,
our environment which includes our location
the humidity level
and the amount of light and as well as
the season or time of year
and for most of our house plants which are
plants that are mostly about their foliage we don't really
expect them to flower or fruit
and they're mostly in
bush form they vine or they're in tree form
the common recommendation on watering
is water when the soil is completely dry
or water them when the top two inches of the soil is dry
and that's a good general guide to start off with but
for some varieties determining the moisture level in the soil
or lack of water in the soil is not enough to know
if we should water our plants or not
for a lot of popular house plant varieties
like succulents, cacti many varieties of hoya like the
ones that have very hardy foliage
peperomias zz plants dracaenas
palms, sanseverias, they don't need watering just because their soil is
completely dry
this plant varieties have the ability to
have water reserve in their rhizomes or bulbs or their even their foliage
their stems or branches that they don't require watering just
because their soil is completely dry
other plants however cannot afford to
have their soil to be completely dry
and must remain moist at all time and
this includes plants like ferns and calatheas and
other plants that are considered finicky
or that are for more advanced plant parents
learning how to water our houseplants is
probably the hardest to master
in plant parenthood care because it
has a huge learning curve
and even for the more experienced plant parents
this is a continued learning process because
watering techniques and frequency of watering changes as the season changes
as external factors affect the environment of the plant
as the plant grow and for those reasons and more
watering is a continued learning process
and something that we have to always pay attention to
whether we are a plant beginner
or a more advanced plant parent
so first question
when to water our house plants
as mentioned when to water your plants largely depends on the type of plant you
have, your environment
and the amount of light your plants get
and the size of your plants also matter
those in smaller pots that are in
one to six inch pots would require more
frequent watering in general
than the ones that are in larger pots
which are eight inches and up
that sounded a little bit dirty
but you know what i mean
for plants with regularly sized or thin
and non-hardy foliage which are like our pothos
syngoniums some of our philodendrons etc
they pretty much follow the general rule
of water them when the soil is completely dry
but at the same time we have to be mindful that some of their varieties
cannot handle drought for too long
and would require more frequent watering
or more consistent watering
than we give our other plants who
can tolerate a little bit of drought
if i let it go dry for too long it produces yellow leaves
while yes they will bounce back
but you can also expect to lose some leaves
if you don't water them on time
for some plant varieties they need to be watered
when the top two inches of the soil is dry
and not when their soil is completely dry
while i can certainly push them and wait
until they're bone dry before i water them
because they are much larger plants with much larger foliage
that needs a lot of water
i try to keep their water level
consistent and their watering schedule more consistent and try not to
push them to extremes so that they don't act out
especially for the fiddle leaf fig
which will let me know that i
f up is watering when the new growth has
a lot of oedema or a lot of the red spots
and if i know the plant is not completely bone dry
i would have less tendency to over compensate
and oversaturate the plant with water
which is not good either because it can lead to suffocating the roots
which can lead to root rot
it can flush out nutrients unnecessarily
and it could also provide a breeding ground
for fungus and for bacteria and for pests
especially for fungus gnats because they love very moist soil
to lay down their eggs and breed
so for my larger plants i prefer to water them
when the top two inches of the soil is dry so that
i have less tendency to over water them
and just give them the enough water that they need
and the water level is always consistent
and not fluctuating
and for succulent-like plants like the
peperomia or the ceropegia woodii string of hearts
you can wait for the soil to be completely dry but also
you can perform something called the
taco test which i learned from nick pileggi
where in you take one of the more
mature leaves in the plant
and usually it is the plants that you
can find at the base and try to fold it in like a taco shell
if you can do that very easily then it's
time to water your plant
but if not then you could wait a couple more days
before you do so even
though the soil is already completely dry
for your desert plants like your succulents
cacti zz plants snake plants
some dracaenas they require very seldom watering
and another rule that i learned from
nick is that if you are watering your desert plants more often than you pay
your rent or your mortgage
then you are watering your plants too often
while it is true in many cases that plants that receive
more light require more frequent watering that is not always
true for plants like the succulents or cacti which requires
very bright light but require very seldom watering
so you just have to be mindful again by the type of plant that you have
not just go by the amount of light that they get and the size of the plant
there are also plants that require moderate lighting but still require
a lot more frequent watering
like your ferns and your calatheas
and how often your water also changes with the season
you're gonna water a lot more often during the growing season versus the
non-growing season
during the time i'm filming this we're
in the middle of fall heading towards the winter
so i'm gonna be watering my plants a lot less frequently
than i did over the summer
a lot of our house plants go through the dormancy
period during the cold season or over the winter they are
not going to require the same amount of light
and watering that we give them during the growing season and our plants know
how to adjust to receiving a lot less light during dormancy but it
is largely up to us to adjust the amount of water
that they receive during this period
so we have to be mindful with the amount
of water that we give them
and also the frequency of watering
watering our plants too much and too often is what leads to the death of
plants during a short period of time
so the way you can check if your soil is completely dry
and i kind of went over this in my pothos care video
if you haven't seen it yet go watch it
but one method is to simply use your finger
stick it into the soil and when you take
it out if there is little to no soil attached your finger
then the soil is dry
another way you could check is if the soil is starting
to separate away from the pot especially if it's a plastic pot
then the soil is dry
and also if the pot feels very light
but that takes a bit of time to learn
i compare it to lifting an empty glass
versus lifting a glass that is filled with water
but to make your life easier and eliminate all the guesswork then i
suggest investing in a moisture meter
in my first year as a plant parent
i was able to survive without one
so i don't deem this as a completely necessary tool
but as i said if you want to make your life easier
and you want to eliminate all the guesswork
then go ahead and invest in one
they are relatively cheap
i think i got this for about nine or ten dollars at
home depot or lowes and you could also get them on amazon
if you can't find it in your local garden center or hardware stores
how to water houseplants seem pretty straightforward
but aside from knowing when to water houseplants
how to water and how much water to give our houseplants is something a lot of
plant parents actually get wrong
sometimes we give our plants way too
much water and sometimes too little water
i get questions like "is a cup of water enough for my plant?"
i don't know it really depends on many factors that i have mentioned earlier
but when you're watering your plant your main goal is to make sure that the water
reaches the root ball of your plant not just the
top soil and the sides of your plant
which often happens when you are top watering
and i know there's debate on which method is better
top watering or bottom watering
and there are pros and cons in both
but i personally stan for bottom watering
and i think it's so much better than top watering and let me tell you why
bottom watering eliminates the guesswork
on how much water to give our house plants
and our house plants get the right
amount of water that they need
and the water actually reaches the root
ball and all parts of the soil
when it comes to top watering
sometimes when we water from the top
the top soil gets wet but what we don't
know is the rest of the water just run off on the side
and even though we know that happens with
top watering we then tend to over
compensate and pour too much water
on the top of the plants
which then leads to soil erosion soil compacting and
also a lot of water waste
the risk of overwatering with bottom watering is little to none
and the only way you could really do
that is if you leave your plant on your watering tray
for more than 24 hours which could also happen with top watering
if your plant is in a cache pot or if you have
a dish underneath the pot
and you forgot to drain it out as well
and some are concerned with mineral and
hard water buildup with bottom watering
but that can happen with top watering as well if you're using regular tap water
to water your plants it doesn't matter whether the water
comes from the top or from the bottom or from whatever direction
the water gets into the soil
the water contains minerals hard water
will build up in the soil and on the pot over time
and the way you get rid of that buildup
is through flushing your plants and i have a whole video on that you could
check out i'll put it down the links and perhaps up here as well you also
need to use room temperature to lukewarm water when
watering your plants
and i say room temperature to lukewarm water
because room temperature depending on
the weather or depending on where you live
room temperature can still be cold for your plants especially during the winter
season so a little bit closer to luke warm
water would be better for your plants
it would prevent shock and damage to your roots
once the water gets into the soil the
roots of your plants dictate the overall health
of your plants more than the foliage does
so make sure you are taking care of the roots
as much as you are taking care of the foliage
but no matter how you
water make sure you let your plants
drain out excess water
before you put them back into their decorative pot or into their cache pot
if you are watering your plants directly in their cache pot
i don't recommend that because it's so easy to forget
to drain out the excess water later on
and if you don't let your plants strain
out the excess water before you put it back into its cache pot
it can easily lead to root rot because
it creates an extra humid environment
while we generally agree that humidity is awesome for plants
it can also lead to rotting
so what we want to do is after we water our plants
make sure that they drain the excess water
we give them a lot of air circulation
and a lot of extra light
so that they could wick out the extra moisture a lot quicker
before we put them or place them back into their decorative pots
and cache pot so that we can prevent any issues with rotting and also provide a
breeding ground for pests fungus and bacteria
so that's everything you need to know about watering your house plants like i
said watering is probably one of the hardest
to master as a plant parent but it just takes
time and practice so don't be intimidated by it
but yeah that's it for this video thank you so much for watching
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until my next one but until then
i see you
i appreciate you
take care of yourself and each other
and have a plantiful day
bye!