What to do with your indoor houseplants when you’re gone for more than a week? That was the question we had to answer while planning a recent month long trip. Reluctant to bother our neighbors or friends, we opted for an automatic watering system to care for our beloved plants.
Yes, there are other options to keep your house plants watered, such as adding water retaining polymers to your pots or self watering systems that use a plastic bottle, but I wasn’t sure either of these options would be sufficient to keep our plants going for the entire month.
Here’s the Indoor System we Bought. Brand: Moistenland
Worked Great! We Used a 5 Gallon Bucket with this Kit
For us, it seemed like the best option was an automatic indoor watering system. The kit I chose was by Moistenland and consisted of a pump/automatic timer that clips onto the side of a 5 gallon bucket (you can opt for larger or smaller depending on your needs). This particular timer also runs on battery power, but several reviews warned against relying on this option.
We used a 5 gal bucket for a larger water reservoir
Easy: Setting up the systems took about an hour. That included time to gather all the plants into the bathtub, then cut and hook up the tubing and drip emitters for each plant. The timer was, fortunately, very straight forward to program and phew, the thing actually worked when I tested it.
Scheduling: I opted for a 2-minute run time once every 7 days. Depending on the type of plants you have and their size, you may want to increase or decrease the frequency and run time. I set the plants in the bathtub (not on their drainage plates) to allow for the runoff and to fully drain.
Results: The only thing left was to say farewell to the plants and hope they looked just as healthy and green when we got back! Our watering system worked perfectly. The 5-gallon bucket was overkill for our houseplants but it definitely gave us piece of mind. The run time was just right with excess water flowing down the bathtub drain.
Happy Travels!
Judy and Nicole
Ready to Buy? We recommend the Indoor Drip Watering system by Moistenland.
The kit includes 30-feet of tubing and enough emitters to set up watering for 15-plants. You could easily add more tubing and emitters, if needed. We also found the timer very simple to program. The added option of a USB power source makes it a more reliable timer, as mentioned, over a battery operated (only) power source. For you convenience we’ve included our Amazon link.
Good luck and happy travels!