Garden & balcony: This is how plants don’t dry out during your vacation

Garden & balcony
This prevents plants from drying out during your vacation

The plants can survive best in the bathroom.

© brizmaker / Shutterstock.com

Off to summer vacation, but what to do with the plants at home? The best tips and tricks for plant care in summer.

There are a few things to prepare before going on holiday: Not only do you want to plan your trip and pack your suitcase, the green protégés at home also have to be looked after if you don’t want to return to a dreary plant graveyard. This is how you prepare the plants properly for the time without daily care.

Preparing for the vacation time

Before leaving your plants at home alone, you should give them another all-round cleaning: dust them off and remove damaged leaves. It is best to place the plants in a place where they get a lot of light – for example, in front of a window with open curtains, but not in direct sunlight. In addition, the plants need sufficient fresh air with high humidity. The ideal place: the bathroom. Because this also reduces the water requirement.

Shortly before leaving, you should give the plants enough water again – but only the usual amount. If you mean it too well, the plants can literally “drown” or the roots go moldy.

Care for plants while on vacation

The ideal solution would of course be to hire a gardener from friends or family to take care of the plants on a regular basis during the vacation. But even without help, plants do not have to dry out. Provided the right resources are provided, the plant can take care of itself to a certain extent. For example, you can put your green protégés in the bathtub, line them with plastic wrap and place the plants in water about three centimeters high. So you can take as much water as you need yourself.

If you don’t have a bathtub, you can work with water storage tanks. For example in the form of a bottle that you fill with enough water. You poke small holes in the bottle lid and then stick the bottle upside down in the potting soil. Small amounts of water gradually flow into the earth.

Another option that has proven itself is to place a water container next to the plant and connect it to the potting soil with a thick cord made of natural material. In this way, too, the plant draws as much water as it needs.

And after the vacation?

Before returning to the routine, the plants should first move into their familiar surroundings. If the plant looks dry, you can give it some life again by “dipping” it: Simply place the pot in a washbasin filled with water for an hour. Another first aid tool for dried out plants is cutting: around a third of the leaf surface should be removed.

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