I have this small problem going out for holidays far away from Europe. I am planning to have a great time there with my girlfriend and friends. However, I have something that bothers me every time I think about my holiday…my precious plants. I don’t know who will take care of them? Who will water them? I’m so stress..
Normally my neighbors are the only persons that I can count on when I was away for more than a week. At the moment, they already went out of town for holiday. I might put the plants at my mother’s house but she already has too many plants in her house and it seems to me that she’s not too eager to take care of my plants. Well, I’m really lost now..Should I bring my plants to Bali with me where i will spend my 3 weeks holiday? Out of question..
Well since last week, I tried to find a solution from all sources and I found several useful tips on how to leave your plants alive and healthy during holiday time. There are different way to take care of your plants starting from indoor plants, garden plants, until your hanged flowers..
- Indoor plants
First of all, you need to group all of your plants in luminous places. If possible place them where they can receive some exposure from morning sunlight because plants need it for photosynthesis. Although, avoid placing them in areas where they would have a direct exposure with sunlight! Over exposure of sunlight can lead to oxidative damage to chlorophyll and other key photosynthetic pigments and they could eventually suffer and then die.
While you are away, you need to assure your plants enough humidity that continues until you come back from holiday. There is an alternative way to keep an adequate humidity level for your plants. It consists of placing the plant’s pots in circle around a stool where you put a “bowl filled with water” on top of it. Connect each pot by lantern wicks to allow water to pass from the bowl to each pot. This method will assure a proper level of humidity during your absence. Of course, if you have lots of plants, you’ll need a bigger water bowl for all the plants.
The second alternative is to use Drip irrigation system. This is is another method to maintain the level of humidity. This technique is quite effective for growing plants, you just need to create a small hole in the cap of the bottle and bury the bottle (head/cap inside the soil) to create a dripping effect to water the plant/plants. You can see the steps to make drip irrigation system in my other article: recycle your unused items for garden decoration.
- Terrace and Balcony plants
The idea is to place your plants in your balcony where the sun will appear only during the end of the day which means at west. Thus, your plants would only received soft and harmless sunlight that is sunset. On the other hand, think about put your pots in a solid position in case there is storm coming. For humidification, using the drip irrigation system will solve the problem.
ahhhhhh very good, bookmarked 🙂 keep it up, JusyKassy. http://www.flightsrhodes.org
There is a great article at the online community at http://www.bonsaioutlet.com that I saw the other day. I was wondering about this exact issue of travel and summer plant needs and while I was there I also bought some beautiful (seriously pretty!) pots for 10% off with a coupon that a friend gave me. She said that it’s worked for everyone she’s given it to. “The code is “bonsaithanks” so, if you need anything plant or bonsai related…now’s the time! :o)