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Appreciation post: a guy at the Tulsa botanical garden showed me I was watering all wrong
I have been keeping houseplants for about 9 years and I always thought I had it figured out, pour water on top until it runs out the bottom, done. Last month I went to the Tulsa Garden Center for their plant swap and got talking to an older guy named Walt who has been growing ferns since the 70s. He watched me water a rabbit foot fern and said, pretty gently, that I was drowning the crown and leaving the roots dry at the same time. He showed me how to set the pot in a basin and let it drink from the bottom for about 20 minutes, then dump whatever is left. I tried it on my crispy maidenhair and my sad little calathea, and in three weeks the new leaves came in with no brown tips for the first time since I bought them. Turns out my tap water sitting out overnight was not the fix I thought it was either, the real problem was how it got in. Now I am wondering what else I picked up wrong over the years. How do you all water your ferns and other fussy plants?
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