Back from Vacation with Plant Results

There's nothing sweeter than coming home after a wonderful 11 day vacation.  I love walking in and hearing the familiar sounds, looking out the windows and seeing the familiar sights, and laying in my very own bed.  John and I had a fabulous time with his family in Maryland and some of my family in Virginia.  We went fishing, played games, ate amazing food, had late night chats, and greatly enjoyed being with our wonderful families.

Coming home I was nervous about our plants. Before leaving I set up a vacation watering system in our bathtub designed to keep the plants watered.  I was mostly worried about the fact that the bathroom has no access to natural light and our vegetables were sun loving fiends.  

At first glance everything looked pretty good...until I started pulling the plants out one by one and taking them outside for a better look.  We had some hardy survivors, mostly houseplants acclimated to less sunlight.  We also had some victims, mostly newer plants I had just planted or transplanted that lacked the root system necessary to survive a stressful 11 days. There wasn't a single plant that had dry soil, but several had grown mold from the wet, hot, and humid conditions in the dark bathroom.

Here are some basil I transplanted just a few days before leaving as well as some newly sprouted flowers that didn't make it through our vacation.

Established basil rocked the vacation watering system as did the thyme.

Our main focus was our vegetable garden. We were worried our vacation would ruin our dreams of homegrown carrots, bell peppers, and cayenne peppers. I'm not sure yet if the dreams are dashed.

The carrots are looking yellow and wilted from the lack of sunlight and one plant had some mold growing on it.

The bell peppers are looking a little stronger, but the tops of each plant are crispy.  When we left the plant was covered in white blooms which have all died away...I'm worried this means no bell peppers for us.

Our houseplants rocked the vacation, though, and all survived including this one.

We learned several lessons through this self-watering experiment.  First, when seed packets say the plant needs full sun, they cannot go 10 days in a dark bathroom.  If I were to do this again, I would remember to keep the bathroom light on for at least a hint of light for the plants and I may even try to decide if a particular plant would survive no water or no sunlight better.

I'd also turn the fan on in the bathroom and perhaps bring in small fan to keep the air moving. With all the water and the heat in our apartment, mold grew on the weaker plants.  Perhaps creating some air movement would help lesson the humidity and also cool down the plants a tad.

I wouldn't call our vacation watering system success, but with the amount of survival, especially considering we were gone for 11 days when the temperatures averaged 90 degrees, it was far from a fail.  If anyone has any advice on nursing our plants back to health, please share.  Also, if anyone knows if vegetable plants still produce vegetables after losing their blooms, I'd love to hear.

Vacation Watering System

Summer is a time for vacations and for that I love summer.  Summer vacations, however, tend to bring up a lot of obstacles when you're new to a city and don't have any friends to casually leave your house keys with and ask that they water your plants a few times while you're gone. We just left on a road trip to see family and we had almost forgotten about the fact that we didn't have any of those old amazing friends we were so lucky to rely on for help.

Just a day before the big road trip did I remember our balcony container garden as well as my very loved houseplants.  The heatwave we've been having for the last three weeks worried me about how our plants would survive for ten days without water. I immediately went to google for some suggestions and learned that almost everyone alive has close friends to ask (at least that's what all the suggestions were on the message boards to those few loners who had no trusted friends, like us).

I guess the saying is true - necessity is the mother of invention.  Sitting down with my thinking cap, I came up with two ideas. The first was to fill empty bottles with water, stick them in the plants and allow the water to slowly moisten the soil.  I came up with this while remembering those self-watering bulbs you can buy for $10-$15 at garden stores. I decided to try it out and soon realized that, unfortunately, my idea was flawed. The opening of the beer bottle was too large and the water drained into the soil within a couple hours. That would not work with our ten day vacation coming up - we needed something that would slowly ensure that our plants were hydrated for at least a week or so.

Enter idea number two: fill the bathtub with water and place the plants on top of something that would wick the water from the bathtub into their soil.  I have a large variety of pots and plants and therefore a garden with a large amount of varying water needs. Some of the plants get upset with too much water - so I couldn't just dunk them in the tub of water.  Some other of our plants fear dehydration and beg for water constantly - so I had to ensure they'd be kept moist.

I ended up gathering up our baking dishes and placing them upside down in the bath tub.  I filled the tub until the water was slightly above some of the smaller baking dishes and not quite covering the other larger baking dishes.

I then covered them with a towel, making sure to drape the towel into the water between the baking dishes. I knew the towel would wick the water up and stay moist.

I carefully arranged our plants in the bathtub, placing them on the towel-covered baking dishes. The plants that love water I placed on the lower baking dishes that were covered while the plants that enjoy some drying out were placed on the higher dishes that were not submerged in water.

I also have a couple pots that don't have holes in the bottom. For them, I watered the soil extremely well and placed them on the edge of the tub hoping that the extra humidity from the water-filled bathtub would help them a little.

I've been keeping my fingers crossed that my plants will survive our vacation.  After starting many of them from seeds and taking in dying plants from friends and nursing them back to health I would hate to come home to a plant-less house.  I'll keep you updated on how this watering system worked, but until then, perhaps you could cross your fingers for us too?