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Comment by mstade | Hacker News Reader

Same here, though I’m in the lower tens, not quite as high as over 35. It’s a learning experience for sure, but he joy of seeing a living thing thrive in your home is wonderful.

That said, it really makes me anxious to be away from home for more than a couple of days now. Have you looked into any automation solutions to deal with watering etc.? I’ve resorted to buying a few bottles of wine for my neighbors so they agree to take care of them, but not quite dared to hook up an automated watering system, for fear of coming home to an apartment full of water everywhere.. :o)

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This is what I rigged up a while back. You can really go crazy with an RPi based monitoring system but just automatically squirting a bit of water in every day works well in my experience. This will keep plants going for a couple of weeks even if some usually end up a bit dry at the end.

You could always rig up a transfer pump from another bucket if you need more total water.

https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2019/01/keeping-my-herbs-alive...

Same here, I had to leave for 2 weeks and had a family member take care of the watering. As far as automated watering goes I don't think that there is a good solution that scales for potted plants. I do however have an hydroponic NFT system that is hooked to a larger pump and reservoir system with artificial lights. I use home assistant to manage the lights, pump and camera so I am able to control it remotely.

You can get glass bulbs with a straw that sticks down into the soil; air pressure prevents them draining quickly so the better ones take a week or so to deliver 150ml of water.

For that matter you can use an empty wine bottle.

My problem is that plants can usually be OK up to a week or so. It's when you get into the two week range that it becomes tough. I've never found the gravity feed options really worked for the time periods I've needed them.

Yeah, but it’s far easier to find someone who can check in and refill them once in a two week holiday vs 6-7 visits to water.

I left for two weeks, with a key and notes left to a friend on what to do with my plants in my absence. Two weeks later I return (my friend had completely spaced out and forgot to come over even once) and my herbs (thyme, basil) are completely dead, but everything else was perfectly fine.

Interestingly, on my trip away I bumped into a person who does professional plant tending for public buildings, or businesses that want plants but can’t trust themselves to take care of them, and we had a brief chat. She said the number one mistake people make with plants is overwatering them.

Root rot is a death sentence.

It's really impressive how fast it can kill a plant. Overwatering is the first thing that comes to mind tell me that their beloved plant is dying.

> number one mistake people make with plants is overwatering them

This is why I switched to aquarium plants. No need to water them. Just change some of the water evey now and then.

I'm fairly lucky in that my plant love of choice are haworthias, a kind of succulent. They do well going without water for long periods of time...

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