• fireweed@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I think it could work well if you’re the type of person who can follow a daily schedule better than a weekly or biweekly schedule (for instance, if you build it into your routine, e.g. “every day after finishing breakfast the first thing I do is water the houseplants”). It could also work well if having to make a judgment call (“water only when the soil is dry”) is too intimidating or can’t be scheduled into a calendar app with automated reminders.

    I know of some plants that can tolerate irregular watering, but can’t think of many that thrive with it. Even in the wild, the seeming randomness of rainfall has at least a seasonal pattern to it, and the plants that are best suited to irregular watering are generally not ideal houseplants for various reasons, like they go dormant during dry spells and start looking ugly, or drop a bunch of leaves when underwatered and make a mess, or require huge root systems, etc. Probably the best houseplants for the truly incapable of following a watering schedule are the drama queens: those plants that have big, showy leaves that droop significantly when thirsty, but quickly perk back up after watering. Noticing this still requires attention, of course, but wilting leaves are much easier to notice than dry soil. I’ve never grown a houseplant like that so I can’t come up with specific examples, but I know they exist.