Vacation Watering Tips with more pictures by clicking on the Vacation watering tips below.

There are several things that you can easily do to keep your house plants and garden baskets and containers alive while you are off on vacation. For house plants try one of these ideas. The Bathtub or Shower Idea shown below This works for all of those smaller house plants for short vacation trips. One week or less is my guess. Longer than that the quality of the plants will begin to go down.

Use the Garage!! Using the cooler darker garage is also something that I do fairly often. I do this when I take a short trips or especially if I bring home some plants and don't have time to plant them for several days. My garage is cooler and not having the outside air keeps the plants from drying out so quickly. It's amazing how long they can stay inside like that. Again...not for long periods of time. If you are gone longer than 5 to 6 days then one other option is to have a friend take your plants out for a 'watering and airing'. A good drink and a few hours in the light [shade] will do wonders.

Below are my other tips for managing baskets and pots while away from home.

Do the hot weather trick of double potting your plastic pots.

Set up one of the temporary watering schemes shown below. You can go to any of the home improvement stores or your local irrigation supply house. There you will find all sorts of soaker and drip type of hoses. The ones I chose to try out are made by Fiskars. It isn't a high tech type of layout but it certainly did work.

If you don't have any Automatic sprinkler system in your garden you can still do this. Wastes a bit of water but it works. Look at the picture on the vacation watering tips image page and see the one just hooked up to a hose. Read the extra information towards the bottom of this page. You can fix the soaker hose to go into your pots and just turn the water on a little tiny bit.
Be sure to put a note on the faucet so some good hearted person doesn't turn it off on you!!!

Here are my baskets and pots hooked up to the mini soaker hose and ready for me to leave on vacation. You can't see the hose but it snakes from pot to pot. Since this is ooze tubing I placed all my containers where the rest of the flower bed can use the extra water.

Vacation Watering Tips. Use the ones that fit your situation

If you want to see these pictures and a few more as close-ups click Vacation Watering Tips

House plants...Water well, then place pots in the bathtub. You can leave your plants with a little water in the tub and the plants will use it while you are gone. You need to be careful not to leave too much water in the tub or your plants will drown. Sometimes it is safer to put pie tins or plastic saucers with extra water under each pot.

Outdoor pots You can try putting them in your cooler and darker garage. They will dry out more slowly. Use a drip pan or pie tin under the pot for extra water

Another idea is to place all your pots where the automatic sprinklers will hit them.
To use the automatic sprinkler systems. First, Measure sprinkler amount by placing pie tins in several areas of garden. Check after watering.
Try out your pots in the same places as the pie tins and check again after watering. In this picture I collected a cup of water in the pie tin from the sprinkler. If I put a potted plant there it would probably get 1/2 cup of water, but if I keep pie tins under pots I'll have more water retention. 3 or 4 days ahead move all containers to areas with automatic sprinklers. This includes all baskets, place baskets up on pots if necessary.
Put out snail bait before your vacation starts. [A little known fact...snails & slugs can sense when you leave and they head for all of their favorite garden treats!

Best Method. Buy a little roll of mini soaker hose. About as big as your little finger. {Fiskars makes this and the attachments.}

Attach to your sprinkler system pop up or other sprinkler head and fasten the soaker hose so that it drips into the pots when the automatic system comes on.

Place all of your containers, baskets, pots in a nice semi shade section. Fasten the mini soaker hose in circles so that it drips into the pot. Use twist ties to fasten to hangars or bamboo stakes you put into your pots. Best place is in a planted area so that the extra water is used by other plants. Ask a neighbor to check at least once a week.

Alternative for those without sprinkler systems. Fasten mini soaker hose to each pot, fasten hose to water faucet. Leave the faucet on just a little tiny bit. Be sure to put your pots into a flower bed that also needs water because it will drip all along the line.

Pay a neighbor young person to water your baskets and pots. If you do this move everything to one easy to water place. do this a week ahead of time and you try out how much and how often each plant needs water. Write it all down and mark instructions on each pot.
If you have really expensive plants think about leaving a sign-in sheet with a neighbor. the same kind that you see in Rest Rooms for the cleaners to initial. There are many reports of all the watering being done a day before the owners return and no way to prove that the paid waterer didn't do their job.