Who doesn’t love taking a vacation? A getaway to get away from it all. But if your home is full of blooms and flora, you may be worried about what will happen to them while you’re on holidays. In anticipation of one of the busiest travels seasons, we’ve compiled our top tips and tricks for keeping your own plant world happy and healthy while you’re away.
1. Consider a Rearrangement
We often have our plants in both functional and aesthetic locations in our homes. While you’re on vacation, however, consider a rearrangement. Move your plants slightly away from bright light, move humidity lovers into smaller locations (like bathrooms) with good light and gather plants together. The goal of grouping and moving from higher light areas is to help preserve water. Nothing too drastic, but grouping together will help keep humidity a little higher and less light means the soil will not dry out as quickly.
2. Plan a Watering Strategy
This is super dependant on the types of plants you have and how long you’re on vacation. You’ll want to first determine how often you should be watering each of your plants. If they require a watering frequency that is less than your trip duration, then give each plant a good soak before your vacation. If they need a significant amount of water, consider utilizing capillary wicks or a DIY solution of a water bottle. With the latter, you fill it with water and poke a small hole in the cap, you then flip it and place it into your soil for a slow drip. Or fill a shallow tray with rocks and water, and place plants on top of the rocks. It’s important to note that your plants should not be sitting in water, instead, the water is there to increase humidity.
Now, if you’re leaving for an extended period of time (over 1 month), call a friend or family member to step in a provide a watering or two! Just be sure to provide clear and concise watering instructions, along with locations of each of the plants for ease of care. Ps. if you travel/go on vacation after, consider one of our favourite succulents as they can go for long periods of time without waterings.
3. Clean Up & Lightly Prune
Assess each of your plants and remove any dying, dead or unhealthy foliage or flowers. Floral buds in general (though it feels painful to trim off a growing bud) can also be removed. The latter helps plants not to over-exert themselves as floral production is taxing. The former provides the remainder of the plant with additional energy. Even if something appears to be dead or dying, it may still be draining the plant of energy that can be used elsewhere.
Helpful Hint: If you’re feeling particularly stressed just before vacation, save the cleaning and pruning till just before your leave, specifically block time for it. There is something revitalizing and calming about this kind of care. It will help ground you and shake off some of those pre-travel nerves.
4. Adjust your Temperatures While on Vacation
It is a common practise to adjust home temperatures while on vacation! In this case we recommend lowering your temperatures slightly. Depending on the kinds of plants, the ideal temperature will vary. Check the lower temperature thresholds for your plants and adjust accordingly. Just like rearranging with light, the idea is to have your plant use less energy/water when exposed to colder temperatures.
5. Skip the Fertilizer
The obvious trend here is that we want our plants to grow slowly and surely. Fertilizer can often provide a boost and boom to growth, so it’s important to forgo the fertilizer in the weeks leading up to your trip. It will actually work to your benefit to fertilize when you return to help revitalize them if they have at all struggled in your absence.
We hope your upcoming vacations are fulfilling, peaceful and rewarding. And that your plants thrive even while you’re away. If you’re looking for inspirational reading material, check out The Wild Blog, for more on all things garden and lifestyle. Lastly, we’d love to connect, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Pinterest!
