I finally figured out why my ferns were dying after a visit to the local botanical garden

Went to the Denver Botanic Gardens last Saturday and noticed all their ferns were sitting in trays of pebbles with water underneath. Tried it at home with my Boston fern and it's perked right up in just a week. Has anyone else had luck with the pebble tray trick?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jade6d ago

I mean, I gotta push back on this a little. Pebble trays are one of those things people swear by but the actual benefit is basically nothing for most homes unless you're running a humidifier in a closet. The water evaporating from a tray under a pot is not gonna raise the humidity around the fern leaves unless you have like twenty trays crammed together in a tiny space. Your fern probably perked up because you started paying more attention to it and watering it more consistently. The real reason plants fail is usually underwatering, overwatering, or bad light, not lack of some misty vapor rising from gravel. Plus those trays can turn into mosquito breeding grounds if you're not dumping them out every week. You'd be better off just grouping plants together or getting a cheap humidifier if you really want to boost humidity.

rivershah6d ago

@the_jade you're not wrong about the mosquito thing, that's a real pain. But the pebble tray trick actually helped my ferns too, and it wasnt just me paying more attention. I live in a dry apartment and the tray sits right under the pot, so the water evaporates right up into the leaves. The fern perked up after a week and stayed that way, so something is working. Humidifiers are great but expensive and loud, so the tray is a cheap fix. Just gotta dump the water every few days to stop bugs.