💾 Archived View for transmom.love › herbalism › watering-factors.gmi captured on 2024-05-10 at 10:39:10. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-28)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
You have to water more often when...
You have to water less often when...
It is impossible to mentally calculate all these variables; therefore, regular schedules for plant watering are unreliable. The reliable way is to stick a finger deep into the hole and see if it's wet. Be careful of tall pots, which depending on other conditions may be dry in the top but still wet in the bottom (watering from the bottom prevents this issue).
Another technique for small and medium pots is to lift them up. They’re a lot heavier when the soil is holding water. Do this a couple times and you’ll see, it’s really obvious if they’re dry or not.
If in doubt, err on the side of too dry. But the ideal is to avoid going full bone-dry, as that hits the soil life negatively.
If your plant is doing badly and you're a beginner, you're probably giving her too little sun. If you're sure you're giving her enough sun (are you *really* sure tho), watering issues are #2. If your well-lighted plant is doing badly, stick a finger in the hole.
It's very unlikely that the problem is the soil being too acidic/basic or lacking nutrients etc. Consider that it's possible to grow any plant healthy and fine in pure water with minimal nutrients (aquaponics) or in a shallow bowl of rocks (bonsai). Even tiny rocks have enough macro- and micro-nutrients to feed plants for years—as long as the minerals are made soluble & edible to plants, which only happens if you got a healthy soil ecosystem metabolising it, which needs good watering. Investigate the sunlight and watering first; these are the big causes of problems.