Using a Soil Moisture Probe to Water Plants Correctly

Hi I’m Emma I’m here at Good Earth and we’re going to talk about how to water plants today. I’m going to talk about two watering methods and when when to know when to water your plants.So first things first, this is my very, very dry plant the Christmas Cactus which a lot of people are very familiar with. A big sign is that the soil has started to pull away from from the plastic. This is a cactus so it likes to be a little bit drier. However, I’m going to use my moisture meter which is a great tool to have in your house. It’s just like oh I’m not really sure if this plant is dry let me use my moisture meter and find out.

So what you want to do is stick the tip of the moisture meter all the way into the soil down in the bottom there and I’m going to look at the moisture meter. Here one means I’m dry and four means I’m wet so this is very dry. So I’m going to take that out and you can leave your moisture meter in your plant and wait for it to go down because this needs to come out and be dry and then go back in for it to properly work. You can’t store it in your plant but you couldn’t depend on it to tell you that your plant is like I’m ready, it won’t work.

So what you want to do is have a nice whole watering can and its surface so you can let your plant drain through. So you don’t, especially cactuses, you don’t want them sitting in water. So I’m going to water it and water it and you can see that the water is going into the soil. Sometimes, when a plant is so dry that the water will actually just go around the soil and not into the soil. So that’s another thing I’m looking for and making sure that the water is being soaked up by the soil which it is. And do the double a two water nightmare yep water is dripping through to my floor. I’m allowed to do this on the floor, to make a mess in here. And it’s also now very heavy ok so before it was light now it’s heavy. I’m also going to go ahead and take the soil moisture meter to just double check. No harm in double-checking, stick it in there and look at that, magic, nice and wet.

All right quickly our other method. This is an African Violet. There are some plants like Cyclamen is another popular plant that needs it is better at the corner to water from underneath. African Violets we know we can’t get their leaves wet or they will melt very fast. So I am going to actually pour some water in my little bowl here and have it sit and soak up. Now I just poured some water in there and I’m looking at this and it’s like umm there’s not really enough water in there because it’s not hitting the bottom of where the holes are so I’m going to put a little more water in.

There, now do not leave this in here all day. Leave this in here for half an hour. Make sure to fold up the water and then your water will draft up on the violet. Dump the water out and let it breathe. You do not want it sitting in water for days on end, that’s not a good plan. But yes that’s how to water a plant and yes have fun happy sleeping.