Maintaining your plants watered while you’re away on holiday can be a hassle, especially for plants in containers or people from the ground that require a lot of moisture. If you can’t locate a neighbor to give them a daily dousing for you, you might want to try one of the bottle procedures. Make certain to analyze those methods before your holiday to see how long they will keep soil damp in your climate.

Watering Containers with Upended Plastic Bottles

Prepare two-liter plastic bottles by making holes in their caps. Hold a small nail so that its tip is at the center of a bottle cap. Tap the face of the nail with the hammer to drive the nail through the cap. Pull out the nail and repeat the process with your other bottles. Alternatively, replace the caps with screw-on funnel-shaped irrigation spikes, accessible from your garden center, that slow down the release of water in the bottles.

Fill each bottle with water. Screw on either its pre-pregnancy cap or among those irrigation spikes.

Water the soil thoroughly prior to adding the bottles. Turn the jar upside-down and push it in the soil beside the plant you would like to water. Make sure the bottle is secure enough that it won’t tip over. Repeat the process with your other bottles.

Watering Containers with Bottles and Wicks

Remove the caps from your bottles and fill them with water. Set among those bottles on top of the soil from the container you would like to water or put it nearby so that it sits higher than the container it is watering.

Cut a length of nylon parachute or other absorbent cord long enough to run in the base of the bottle out its shirt, down its side and several inches to the container’s soil. Insert 1 end of this cord to the bottle and be sure it falls all of the way to the underside.

Stab the other end of the cord several inches to the container’s soil, using a screwdriver. Repeat this method with the other bottles and containers.

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