Prepare your plants before going on vacation

Here is the long-awaited summer vacation, but a problem arises: How can we make sure that plants don’t suffer too much from our absence? A little guide…

Vegetable plants

If there are no neighbors or friends available to take care of your plants while you are away, there are suggestions which will help you keep them healthy:

• Plan an automatic watering system with a timer that triggers watering in the evening after sunset so your plants take full advantage of the coolness. Prefer microporous tubes along rows of vegetables such as carrots or beans and install drippers at the base of individually planted vegetables such as zucchini or tomatoes.
• Weed the soil, hoe, create channels and tanks to retain water from watering at the base of the plants.
• Mulch the soil with 20 cm of grass clippings, flax husk or straw. Thus protected, it will not be invaded by weeds that compete with your vegetables and will retain its freshness much longer.
• Before leaving, pick fruit and vegetables when they are ripe, and even those that are a little green. You can keep them on sheltered shelves or offer them to your neighbors in exchange for monitoring your yard. Collect the courgette flowers to make delicious pancakes, the buds and fruits that form pickles.
• Likewise, harvest herbs that you can freeze or dry. Reduced in this way, the plants will require much less water and will form a nice clump when you return.
• Treat preventively with horsetail manure and nettle on horticultural plants so that diseases and parasites do not develop in your absence.

Rustica’s advice for Jardideco: stop planting and sowing 3 weeks before your holiday departure, because the seedlings need a lot of water and more supervision to develop well.

On the terrace and balcony

• Group the pots in a shaded place and little wind to preserve them as much as possible.
• Prune petunias, herbs and pelargoniums to provide less surface area for evaporation.
• If it is not possible to install an automatic irrigation system, provide an irrigation system composed of clay cones or drippers connected to the pots and a tank placed at the top.
• Before departure, water very generously Wet the substrate completely.

Rustica’s advice for Jardideco: Don’t hesitate to leave yours pots immerse in a basin of water until no more air bubbles escape. The support will thus be saturated with water before your departure.

Indoor plants

In the apartment, plants suffer even when you go on holiday, that’s it some advice to prepare them well:

• A little cleaning is necessary: ​​cut off yellowed or dried leaves and remove dust with a damp sponge.
• Check your plants for possible pests or diseases and treat them if necessary.
• Eliminate plants such as yucca, cordyline, kalanchoe or sansevieria which will withstand a few outdoor holidays very well.
• Just before leaving, move the plants that will remain inside to a place where the shutters will not be closed because the prolonged lack of light could be fatal to them.
• Water each plant thoroughly.
• Install a large water bottle in each pot with a clay cone on the neck to provide regular watering for your plants.

Rustica’s advice for Jardideco: Gather the pots around the tub filled with water from which you will make cotton wicks connected to each of the pots to water them.

What to do for plants when you return from holidays?

You’re back! If you have followed our advice carefully, your plants should be healthy, but this is not yet the case some small steps to take :

• In the garden, collect ripe fruit and vegetables. If the tomatoes are a little old, make canned sauces and coulis with them.
• Don’t hesitate to prepare jams with overripe fruits from the orchard.
• Remove diseased foliage and rotten fruit so they don’t contaminate the soil. Burn everything.
• Remove unnecessary suckers and stems on tomatoes, melons, cucumbers or eggplants to divert sap to the fruit.
• Benez et waterfall abundantly before scratching the soil adding an organic soil improver.
• On the terrace, water your plants thoroughly, prune yellowing leaves and wilted flowers before returning them to their original position, then add fertilizer to encourage them to start again. You will do the same for houseplants.

Rustica’s advice for Jardideco: To save a plant in poor condition, immerse the pot in a basin of water for ½ hour. Prune yellowed foliage and add crushed horn powder. Water abundantly until complete recovery.