I’ve Never Had Thriving Plants…Until Now!
It’s been about two-and-a-half or three weeks since I showed you all new pictures of the front of our house, and before I took those pictures, I bought new plants for the mailbox planter, the two pots beside the front steps, and planter between the chairs on the front porch. But then I forgot to get good close-up pictures of them.
To be honest, I didn’t expect the plants to last. I have the very opposite of a green thumb. I’ve never been able to keep plants alive. But these plants are not only surviving. They’re thriving!
I mean, just look at this one! It wasn’t spilling over nearly this much right after I planted it.
And I have never been able to keep a fern alive through the month of August. I can handle June, maybe part of July, but August means dead ferns for me. But this one is thriving!
And probably the most shocking of all is that the flowers in the mailbox planter are not just surviving, but they’re thriving also.
I am just amazed at how well these are all doing during our hottest month of the year when the temperature gets to around 100 degrees every day.
None of these plants were doing great the first week. They were surviving, but they weren’t growing. And then I changed one thing that made all the difference in the world.
Instead of watering these plants with water from the outside spigot, I started watering them with the water from our dehumidifier. A few of you suggested that, but it seemed like such a hassle to me. But when my new plants started looking like they were heading for trouble, I decided to give it a try. And I honestly can’t believe how much of a difference that made.
As soon as I started giving them the dehumidifier water, they started looking healthier, they started growing, and the three flowering plants started putting out more flowers.
And I’ve actually started enjoying the process of watering my plants every night. Until now, taking care of plants was something I dreaded…because they would always die anyway . That’s one reason I haven’t been in a hurry to get our yard landscaped. I figured I wouldn’t be able to keep anything alive anyway, so it’s better to dream about it than actually do it.
But now, I thoroughly enjoy my routine of taking that dehumidifier water container outside and watering the plants each night before I go to bed. And it’s motivating when I can get up the next morning and see how they’re thriving, growing, and putting out more flowers.
So now that I’ve seen firsthand just how big of a difference water directly from the air can make to plants (as opposed to city water…how sad is that?), I’m starting to think about rain barrels and other ways to collect rainwater. Obviously, my dehumidifier doesn’t collect enough for an entire planting bed full of plants.
So I want to think about how to collect rainwater, where I can put rain barrels, and then how to get the water from the barrels to the plants easily. Does that require watering by hand? Will I have to be out here every evening watering my plants by hand from the rain barrels? And since we don’t get much rain through the summer, is there a way to collect it during the rainy season (generally April and May) for use through the summer? I need to look into it because I know nothing about plants, gardens, or collecting rainwater. But now, after my very small victory with my four outdoor plants, I want to learn everything I can about these topics.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
They look fabulous and isn’t that the way of things, getting all the answers so you can learn more, at least that is for me. You have a lovely home, it’s beautiful, I would love to drive by that every morning on my way to work and smile saying she is so creative and talented and ambitious and busy, and I love that when we used to live in a neighborhood. It didn’t happen very often, but when it did, I loved driving a little slower by the homes the homeowners loved, because it shows. Have fun learning about your plants and water management.
Cheers to you, Matt and the Fur Gardening Crew!!!
Before watering my house plants I set water out for 24 hrs to let the chlorine dissipate.
Wait. I’ve never heard of this. I’m going to have to look into this! Perhaps the problem isn’t that I don’t have a green thumb. I’ve just been watering with the wrong water. Makes me wonder what that water is doing to me when I drink from the tap. 😒
Reverse osmosis system in our kitchen — could be the best thing I’ve done for the health of my family and pets. I don’t have a whole house system, so I use a Jolie shower head, and my hair is so appreciative of the filtered water. I do add minerals back into my water as I drink.
Nothing. Don’t worry about it – plants are sensitive to chlorine and other chemical salts, but you’ll be fine.
I water my garden with a drip irrigation system hooked up directly to the tap, and my garden is doing just fine, but I don’t know what your local water is like.
Me too!
Do you have a water softener? I was killing my plants by watering with softened water!! The salts in the softened water didn’t make them happy!!!! Once I bypassed the softener for the outside faucets, everything took a turn for the better!!! Just a thought.
We don’t have a water softener, but there’s obviously something in our tap water that plants don’t like. I’m sure there has to be a water purifier specifically for outdoor taps. I need to look into that because our summers are generally so hot and dry that I can’t imagine it being possible to collect enough rainwater to last through the summer.
You might try a place that analyzes water, perhaps a pool/hot tub store.
Try your county extension office for water analysis.
You chose wisely on the Vinca. I plant it every year and it never disappoint! Until this year I only had to water weekly, but with consistent 90+ temps, I watered twice weekly with a sprinkler from city water. I would love to send a pic, but alas, I don’t know how!
Rain barrels are definitely the way to go! It’s free water after all. ( we collect a bucket each before our showers waiting for the water to get warm). I would elevate them on a bit of a rock platform so you can get to the hose spigot easily. Then I recommend those ‘mosquito dunks’ to keep those buggers from laying eggs in it.
You get an enormous amount of runoff from the roof so these things fill quickly then will just over flow till it stops raining, so be mindful of where you put them.
We in S Az and it’s in the 100s for months at a time; I’m gobsmacked that vinca do so well here as well as the foxtail fern. I couldn’t keep it alive at all in Ohio. Same with Rosemary; it got so big here in Az I had to cut it way back. And it looks & smells good tucked in a flower arrangement or a sprig in the kitchen.
Love the vinca! Plant it every year, they are an annual here in St. Louis. This year I had volunteers come back. You can get barrels with a spigot near the bottom and use a hose to water your beds. I used to work for an irrigation supply company they have some nice ones. Can get a little pricey though. I found an industrial soap company, they had some nice plastic 55 gallon drums and my dad helped me put spigots on them. The worst part was spending a week continuously rinsing the soap out of the drums!
You can get the big white IBC totes (275 US gallons) to collect large amounts of water, though they’re probably something you’d want to decoratively hide once set up. They have a spigot on the bottom you can convert for hose use. People often sell them on FB marketplace, pre-washed or unwashed, just make sure they’re food grade. (Though I wouldn’t use asphalt shingle runoff to water vegetables if you ever choose to grow any! Just your ornamental garden).
My dad at a point sourced some plastic barrels used for soap and turned them into rain barrels. The flaws were mosquitos (the tops held 1/4″ of water and so heavy you couldn’t tip), and undersized collection so they had foundation damage.
He placed them next to the house to collect water from gutters. This spot was on the other side of a basement foundation wall, in 5 years time they had water coming in that wasn’t there before. The splash block was enough to get the water moving safely away. So a trench to carry water away to garden beds for a lazy way to water is recommended vs barrels, plus easy to see and fix issues than bury them. Most gardening hobbyists do not want to become plumbers. Do place tanks/containers on a bed of gravel to let overflow water dissipate appropriately.
My favorite is set up 5 gallon buckets on high spots connected to a small system. The bucket functions like mini water tower to help establish areas the first year or so. Dump the water in, adjust the valve. If you don’t want to deal with pressure, use the closed hose and terracotta stakes, also could use soaker hose I hear. I just don’t have the time to implement it.
For collecting water You’d be surprised the volume that comes in from a rain for 1″, easy math 600 gallons per 1000 feet of area and inch of rain. Or just use this calculator.
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-howmuchrain.php
Wrong url Use this https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-howmuchrain.html
We don’t have a dehumidifier, but we do collect the condensation water from our A/C to water plants. That could be another source of “clean” water for your plants. We also use a Berkey water filter inside for drinking and cooking, because our city water doesn’t have great ratings and doesn’t taste good.
Vinca/periwinkles are a sure fire survivor in the Texas heat in the DFW area!
When you water and what’s in your water are both good things to consider.
We have an automated system for watering the foundation and the yard and check for leaks regularly plus water in late evening/after dark in the current extreme heat. Our system connects to area or personal weather stations and needs Wi-Fi. Our “sprinkler guy” can easily view the water usage and trigger test runs without entering our garage or needing us at home with our system.
While we do not yet have rain barrels, I know we can get them free by attending one of those classes from the county at the library. (We keep missing them because of schedule conflicts.)
The flowers look fabulous! You could also use your berkey water if you need more? I remember looking into one for myself awhile back after seeing yours. But also I was looking into something like this for my own outdoor watering needs as I am a small home garderner…
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGX9ZP59/ref=sspa_dk_detail_2?pd_rd_i=B0FGX9ZP59&pd_rd_w=HPwHK&content-id=amzn1.sym.4adc092d-0184-45e6-8bd0-773f48fbf8ff&pf_rd_p=4adc092d-0184-45e6-8bd0-773f48fbf8ff&pf_rd_r=D8GZ9WTSNES6FDM64KSZ&pd_rd_wg=vVnJi&pd_rd_r=13ab74e8-05a2-4591-b51b-a7376969c7ed&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWxfdGhlbWF0aWM&th=1
it’s a link to a inline water filter for your outdoor hose!
You can attach a chlorine filter directly tobyiur hose for watering outside plants! I have put it in front of a drip irrigation system, but you can just use it with any hose. You might want to attach a 6-10′ short hose directly to the faucet, then the filter, then your long hose. https://www.boogiebrew.net/water-filter
The next step after that is the boogie brew compost tea. You can pretty much watch your plants growing after an application, which is such a dopamine hit 😀
Kinda makes ya wonder what’s in the city water! Chlorine, fluoride, who knows? Rain barrels are a great idea and you can probably find a way to run some kind of drip line around the landscaping near the house. The other plants on the mailbox and in planters could have some kind of reservoir system too. Oh, and one thing I’ve seen with rain barrels is to have goldfish in them to eat any mosquito larvae that may be laid there. Another interesting subject for you to explore!
I’ve never heard of goldfish in a rain barrel! Y’all are such a wealth of information for me.
It’s more likely minerals like boron and manganese (which makes the water “hard”). It depends on whether she is served water that is diverted from a lake or stream or pumped and treated groundwater. Groundwater leaches out minerals from the soil it flows through.
EPA has two standards for treated drinking water constituents. One is a health standard and the other is taste and odor standard. In some cases you can taste or smell a constituent in your drinking water at levels that are higher than the health standard (chloring is an example–humans are not bothered much by chlorine, and USEPA requires a chlorine residual at the tap to kill any pathogens that might get into your water after it leaves the treatment plant (eg from infiltration via leaks in water mains). You might smell it, but it won’t hurt you if you are a human (aquatic species are very sensitive to chlorine and so is the yeast you grow when you make sourdough bread, which is why, if your water is disinfected with chlorine, you need to let it sit out over night before you use it for making bread or filling your fish tank).
The USEPA drinking water standard for manganese is 0.05 mg/L (50 µg/L). This is a legally enforceable standard that applies to all public water systems. It is set as close as feasible to the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG) of 0.05 mg/L, which is the level at which no known or anticipated adverse health effects occur, allowing for a margin of safety. Manganese at higher levels can cause neurological effects, especially in children.
Boron is not currently regulated under the U.S. EPA’s National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWRs). It is listed as an unregulated contaminant on the EPA’s Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) and is not subject to a legally enforceable maximum contaminant level (MCL). Boron will kill your plants. When I was a college student, the town I lived in pumped groundwater for its municipal supply. It was high in boron. It killed houseplants. I used to take an empty gallon jug to the chem lab and fill it up with from the sink plumbed with distilled water, and then add fertilizer to water when I got back to my apartment. There was so much boron in the regular tap water than it would leave a white crust on the soil surface in the plant pots.
PS: Even though it will kill your plants, most experiments show that boron is not toxic in trace quantities to human beings, and is perhaps even vital to bone health.
I always have good luck with Miracle Grow in my watering can once a week. Mine were dying from the heat too and I trimmed all the dead off and they took off again with the Miracle Grow. Forgot to use it right from the beginning or they probably would have been okay!
Have you seen water spikes? An upside down bottle full of water, drips slowly to keep plants watered. I tried to attach a picture from amazon, but didn’t know how to attach it.
I’ve seen those! I’ve never used them, though. I wonder if they would provide enough water for outdoor potted plants in August in central Texas. I’ve been watering these plants every single night, and by the end of the next day, the soil is completely dry.
We have a lake house and we are only there on the weekends. When I leave on Sunday, I water my plants thoroughly, then fill a water bottle and put in the terra cotta spikes. It has worked all summer for me in GA with very little rain. I have also seen where some people freeze the water, so it lasts a little longer.
If you have a water softener, you need to be sure it bypasses the hose bib connection! The chemicals that make your water soft make plants die!!
If you set up the garden in any kind of way, you absolutely will need to set up either drip or some kind of watering system. It’s all part of landscaping!
Incredible! Unbelievable! I am like you, I can’t even grow ivy!
You don’t need to pay to have your water analyzed unless you’re on a private well. The city does that and you can request a copy of their latest analysis for your area. Generally, chlorine and chloramine levels are below 4 ppm and don’t affect plants but you can use the information to consult with the A&M Extension people in your area on anything that may be in your water that affects plants like too much iron. They probably also have info online about setting up rain collection systems, keeping roof debris and mosquitos out, and using a diverter from the gutter to prevent barrel overflow on really rainy days.
You should also check out the McClennan country master gardeners group. https://txmg.org/mclennan/ You Should probably get in touch with them about watering and rain barrels and I’m sure the members have a lot of hands on experience.
You can run a drip irrigation from the barrel but my guess is that late summer drought will mean switching to a hose bib so consider that when placing your rain barrel(s). Also someone mentioned putting buckets in the sun to dechlorinate. That works only for free chlorine and not chloramines. Again, I don’t think these are your issue.
If you ever went through with the landscape architects full plans for your yard, you’ll need irrigation from city water. Know that your sewer bill can be affected by this since it’s likely based on your water use. My city only looks at what you use from October through April to determine your sewer bill so it’s not affected by your summer garden usage.
Also, consider using organic fertilizer like Plant-tone or Flower-tone as you start gardening. I’m not a master gardener but I’ve seen people burn plants by over fertilizing with chemical fertilizers and wonder why there plants aren’t doing well, ditto for forgetting to fertilize all together especially container plants. The fertilizer that came with the plant or potting soil will only last so long since the water and therefore fertilizer are running out the pot.
Good luck, your vinca are looking really nice and bring a nice pop of color.
great advice overall, but all of the granular products (espoma….love them!) should be applied mostly at planting time aka spring, as it really takes a while to break down and do it’s intended job. This time of year, I recommend Farmers Secret organic liquid bloom & root booster. It’s much lower “N” in the N-P-K sequence. Gives the phoshorus and Potassium do their jobs as far as bloom boosting and root expansion (nutrient uptaking ablities). Plants should already have plenty of leaf growth at this point, so not much nitrogen should be given. They will bust out of their pots! LOL The Farmers Secret has kept all my veggies in bloom as well as my hydrangdras looking super fluffy! Happy Gardening!
Check out Brad Lancaster’s Ted Talk on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I2xDZlpInik&pp=ygUXYnJhZCBsYW5jYXN0ZXIgdGVkIHRhbGs%3D
or his website:
https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/
Very inspiring and informative about how much rain you can actually collect and how to use it.
Brad Lancaster also has a YouTube channel of his own.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FGgn6sv8YZE
There was a small book I read on this exact process. Very informative! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2K8RW7P Basically, you can add a pump to your rain barrels and a timer so they can work on sprinklers, drip irrigation, etc.
They look beautiful Kristi!!
You should not need to water every night/day, plants do love water especially when it is 100 degrees day after day after day. We have a full yard sprinkler system that runs 3 nights per week, but I would like to have an old fashioned water hose to lay in the flowerbed to fill it up with water at least twice a week. That is what I am going to do as soon as I can walk outside and pull the hose. Hard to do in a walker.
Your plants look lovely.
Look up the ETAW (evapotranspiration of applied water) for your area and the plants you want to plant (local college agricultural extension can probably provide it to you). That tells you how much the plants transpire. Then look at your rainfall data. It should be in inches. Multiply the capture area (the area of your roof) by the number of inches of rain that you get (you can do different estimates based on the “year type” (wet, above normal, below normal, dry, critcally dry). That will tell you the maximum amount of water you CAN collect from your roof. Compare the two. Subtract the roof runoff from the ETAW. That will tell you what you need to collect to get you through the dry season.
I live in California in the Central Valley. Our dry season is too long and too hot for rain barrels to be effective. I’d need a huge cistern to be able to capture nearly enough to make it through the summer without augmenting with another water source. However, we do have a grey water system that collects our shower and washing machine water. We use it in the summer for some of our landscape irrigation. It’s a more reliable and more continuous supply than rainwater. However, you need to be mindfull of how much soap, etc you use and that runs down your drain, because whatever is in your gray water will end up on your plants. We have a valve we can flip (raised foundation) under the house to direct the wash water into the sewer line rather than into our greywater system (which also includes a couple of valved 90 gallon trash cans for water storage). We don’t use the greywater in the rainy months, and hope that we get enough rain to flush the soap residues out of the root zone of the plants. So far so good.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that if you have a water softener, your greywater will likely kill your plants if they’re at all salt sensitive, so you need to set up your collection system so you aren’t collecting the discharge from your water softener (brine). Some places in California have passed ordinances to prohibit water softerners because the salt discharged is bad for both the municipal sewage treatment plant (which provides biological treatment) andthe living things in the rivers and streams that the sewage treatment plants discharge into.
You also don’t want to collect water from your kitchen (or toilet) because you’d be applying too many “nutrients” to your plants and you’d end up with a smelly mess in your yard.