Self Watering Pots For Ferns: Heart Leaf And Maidenhair

One plant that has always given me so much envy is the maidenhair fern. I can't tell you how many I have quickly dried out and killed. Okay, maybe I can tell you it's been like five so far, so when I saw someone on Instagram growing this big beautiful, maidenhair fern, I was so stumped. She said it was an easy care plant for her excuse me. I had to know her secrets. It was a self watering pot. Oh my gosh, why have I never thought of that before so today, I'm gon na be showing you how I have been using my self watering pots to keep my plants alive and we can repot one together. I'M gon na repot up this heart leaf fern, so you can see the process now. I must apologize. We are still in the middle of the self isolating the Kovan. My home schoolers are inside my husband's in the other space I am outside and obviously it's noisy. Please forgive me I will try to speak loudly, just ignore the cars driving by, but before we go any further. What that run subscribe button down there, it's red, it's beautiful, it's gon na make you feel good to subscribe, and it's gon na get you quick access to my videos on Fridays and if you ring that bell, you'll get notification, free plant tips coming straight at you To your inbox, who doesn't want that, go ahead and subscribe below so we're gon na. Do the old switcheroo and put this heartly fern into a self watering pot. Now, if you have ever seen a proper heartly fern, you would know that this one is suffering significantly. I let this one dry out, maybe once or twice maybe three times and since its friend this maiden hair yeah yeah. I did it again. I am going back for another round of Maiden hairs. It is done so well in the self watering pot that I thought. Why not try to convert this bad boy to save it. I think they're so cute and I would hate to lose it so kind of in a last-ditch effort. I am gon na put it in a self watering pot so that it has a better chance of survival. Do you have ferns? Are you keeping them alive? What is your secret besides watering them every second of the day? Let me know in the comments below. Let me know if you are using self watering pots. Am I the last to this party? I am pretty excited about it. Let me know in the comments below, as you likely know, ferns want consistently moist soil and humid environment if possible. They also like bright, indirect light - that's probably not in the cards for this one as it sitting in my bathroom, but I'm hopeful that putting it in a self watering pot is going to give it just a little bit more help. The self watering pots work on capillary action, which just means that, as the plant wicks up water from the soil, the soil then wicks up water from the reservoir that the plant is sitting in. This obviously works particularly well for ferns, because they like that consistent, consistently moist soil. Now before I go a little too far here, I'm going to show you which kind of self watering pot I'm using, there's basically three pieces to it. This here is kind of like the water meter. It tells you what level the water is. This is the base or excuse me, the container that the plant is going to be planted in and then this is the reservoir, so the plant will be planted in here. You can see, there's lots of holes and these holes and these little feet. There is a place where to sit in there. The water is going to sit in the bottom of here and the soil is barely going to come into contact with the water. So, as the plant wicks up the water, the water will be replenished into the soil. That'S creating that consistently moist situation. This meter is going to sit in here and show you how much water you can't see it. There'S no water in here yet, but that will be a read I'll show you in a few minutes, there'll be a red indicator to show you how much water is in there and you'll keep it in between these two lines so that it's fairly simple, you just Kind of put it all together, like that pot up the plant in here, is easy. Now the instructions say to remove as much of the original soil as you can. If you can't get a lot off, it's okay, the roots are just really thin and you don't want to bust them up too much. So I'm just gently removing some of the soil off the bottom and they want you to do this because the recommendation is that you use a soil that is highly water retentive, so they have quar, which they did include in the package, which is nice and I'll. Show you the brand that I'm using it's I'm definitely not an affiliate. I just happened to order this one online, so I'll show you and I'll link it in the notes below, but they included quar, because it's so water retentive the thing about it, though, is it. Does not have any fertilization, so I am going to add a little bit of worm castings before I plant it. Alright, that's about all that I want to do. I can tell that I've lost a little bit of roots in the bottom and I just I don't want to beat it up too much, because it's already not doing great. Now I'm gon na take this quar, which I have had sitting in some water to loosen it up. They send it in these pucks. If you haven't seen it they're really hard, so you have to loosen them with some water and added the worm castings already. So I'm just going to plant this plant up as I normally would, as always, I am a messy planter, can't be helped just can't so I just haven't potted up and desperately needs a trim. Oh there we have it so I have it potted up, and so now I'm just going to set it in the reservoir, and it just is gon na sit like so there's a lot of kind of dirt in the in it, and it's gon na go down In the reservoir, but I can rinse it out at a later time if you have a very dry plant, I would at this point water from the top down. Now you want to fully saturate all of the soil before you really start the wicking process you're just gon na water thoroughly. Until you see the water meter starting to rise - and I hope you'll be able to see that on the camera. Okay, so the water meter is starting to rise and get you a little bit closer. Do you see that red line poking up here, so it's gon na start increasing I'm just gon na give it a little more water, so know if you can see that it's steadily rising so from this point forward helicopters from this point forward, you're just going to Fill in this little section here - and that goes straight down into the water reservoir - that's not going to saturate the plant any more! It'S going to allow the water to go straight down so that it touches the soil on the bottom of the plant in which it can wick the water up. You'Re gon na want to watch this for the next couple days, because it's going to show. I went over the max plane, that's okay for the next couple days. You'Re gon na want to watch, because if your soil was very dry or as your plant gets used to this, it might really take up a lot of water. That'S actually what happened with the maidenhair. I was watering it almost every single day. So after that I just want to make clear you don't want to top water at all. After today, you just want to fill up the reservoir, because, what's going to happen, is you can actually drown your plant? If they're, your top watering and the water has nowhere to go, it's going to be too wet, and the well essentially drown going to depend on how much light these plants are getting the more light, the more photosynthesis, the more they're going to use that water. In order to complete the photosynthesis cycle, so if they're getting a lot of light, they're - probably going to go through more water, so you need to keep an eye on it. The maidenhair I have been watering every two or three days, it's sitting in a medium light situation right now, and so that's quite a bit of water. I'M really impressed it's not only maintained this nice damp soil. It has maintained this beautiful, green foliage. I'M so excited about that now I know what you're thinking you're thinking. What else can I plant in a self watering pot yeah? I know I've been there. Basically, ferns are gon na be great, but anything that likes that moist soil is gon na do really well so babies, tears or spike Moss are basically anything that really likes like a humid wet environment. Anything a terrarium plant is gon na love being in a self watering pot. Now I know with some modifications you can plant other plants and self watering pots, letting them dry out a couple days in between the waterings. Let me know in the comments below, if you are interested in learning about that, and once I get the hang of that, I will do another video, that's it. My friends ferns require that nice moist soil and I just could never quite figure out if I was watering too much or not enough, and this takes out so much of the guesswork assuming I remember to fill the reservoir. If you haven't yet go over and follow me on Instagram, I do shorter videos over there during the week, and I also just have a lot of great tips on my insta stories that I do save and all throughout my feed. And, of course, if you didn't subscribe before, go ahead and do it here, thank you so much you guys. I love that you were here. I love doing these videos, for you I'll see you next Friday.