Garden Log 4/27/21

First, a reminder to local gardeners — it was unseasonably warm yesterday, and even more so today — check any plants you’ve bought and haven’t planted yet, and also any new plantings and give them a good drink of water. They’re going to suffer and possibly die otherwise.

This is also a great day to just generally check on your watering set-up, since if you’re going to be connecting and unconnecting hoses, checking for tightness, spraying yourself periodically in the process, you won’t freeze. 🙂 Investing a little time in this now will save you a lot of grief this summer.

With as many plants as I have, and as hectic a schedule as I have, and unreliable help from the family on watering — they mean well, but are forgetful — watering is generally the bane of my gardening existence. My poor plants offer suffer from my haphazard watering ways.

Case in point, this poor tropical, the tall one in the cobalt blue tall planter, which looks ready to give up the ghost. I don’t know how clear it is from the picture, but all the leaves are hanging down and sadly wilted. They’re not supposed to look like that!

It’s generally the first of my potted tropicals to start wilting from lack of water, so in that sense, it’s been a good indicator plant, a reminder to check all of them and water the ones that need it. But right now, this is just too wilted and sad; I’m on the verge of losing it.

I’m going to try to build in a little insulation for it; I’m transferring it today from its blue ceramic pot to this grey self-watering pot, which has a built in water reservoir. That will collect and hold water at the bottom, making it much less likely that the plant will wither away when I’m a little neglectful with watering. I had my blueberries in one last year, and they did really well.

You can also add self-watering elements inside ceramic or other pots; at least, so I was told when I bought some! I haven’t actually put them in any pots yet, so we’ll have to see how well it works!

The ones I bought (a two-pack for $99) don’t seem available, but if you follow this link, there are similar ones listed there: https://smile.amazon.com/…/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin…

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