Plants and Your Vacation
Do you have plants in containers or the greenhouse and are wondering how to schedule that vacation without sacrificing your precious garden? How are your plants going to get the care that they need? Whom are you going to trust your favorite delicate flowers and vegetables with? Here we will discuss your options.

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006

Whom could you get to care for your plants if you are going to be gone for more than four days? You might want to ask anyone who has helped you in the garden before or somebody you know who has a garden of their own.

If you have to, you can go to your local nursery and see if anyone would a temporary job tending and watering your garden. This might cost a few dollars, but they probably would be familiar with what plants need and what time of day they should be taken care of for best results.

Still having a hard time finding anyone who can care for your plants and your gardens when you are gone? Timers are great for automatically watering plants in the greenhouse. Timers will turn the water on and off. Along this same line, you can put automatic vent openers on your greenhouse so your vents will open when it is getting too hot in the greenhouse for the plants.

Plants that are in difficult to water places, such as in your home, or that are on bottom shelves, can be put into bowls of water so the soil will continually soak water through its roots. Containers of water that your other planted container will sit in will hold water for up to two weeks if need be without over watering the plants.

For plants that are sitting on windowsills or directly in the sunlight, you can draw the blinds so that the sun doesn’t shine as much, drying out your plants. You can put water in the bottom of the container for plants that are indoors in the house, and you won’t have to worry about them for about a week.

One thing that you should be sure to do before leaving on vacation is to remove all the dead leaves and flowers from your container plants in the greenhouse. This will prevent plants from focusing on feeding portions of the plants that are already dead, and will conserve nutrients and water for active portions of the plant.

On a final note, plants that are left in a draft are going to dry out faster compared to plants that are in containers safe from winds.