Keeping houseplants alive while you are away

Plants rarely die of thirst on a two-week holiday. They die of heat, of a south-facing window in July, and of being watered to the point of drowning the night before you left — which is what most people do.

The setup, in half an hour

1. 1Move everything away from direct sun and off windowsills. A plant in shade uses a fraction of the water it uses in light, and shade for two weeks harms almost nothing.
2. 2Group them together, on the floor, in the coolest room. Grouped plants hold humidity around each other.
3. 3Water properly the day before you go — soak, drain, then let the top of the compost dry. Do not leave anything sitting in a full saucer for a fortnight; that is root rot, not insurance.
4. 4Close curtains in the sunniest room and leave the heating off or low.
5. 5Take the dead leaves off and check for pests. Two weeks unattended is when a small infestation becomes the whole shelf.

That alone gets most collections through fourteen days. Anything longer needs water added while you are away.

Ways to add water, best first

• A person. A neighbour with written instructions per plant beats every gadget, and "a small glass each, once a week" is a clearer instruction than "water them".
• Capillary matting or a towel: one end in a basin of water, pots stood on the wet end. Reliable, cheap, and it works for a shelf at a time.
• A wick — cotton string from a bottle of water into the compost. Test it a week before you leave, because an untested wick either does nothing or floods.
• A clear bag over a pot, held off the leaves, for humidity-lovers only. Never in sun; it cooks.
• Self-watering spikes and bottles. They empty faster than the packaging suggests. Test these too.

The ones to worry about

Ferns, calatheas and anything with thin soft leaves will not last two weeks without water — those are the ones to move to a matting setup or hand to the neighbour. Succulents, cacti, snake plants and ZZ plants would rather you left them alone entirely; watering those before a holiday does more harm than the holiday.

Seedlings and anything recently repotted are the other risk. If you can delay a repot until after the trip, delay it.

When you get back

Move things back to their light gradually rather than straight onto the windowsill — two weeks in shade means a sunburnt leaf on day one. Check the undersides for pests before anything goes back on a shelf with the others.

And write down what survived and what did not, per plant. Two holidays of notes tell you exactly which three plants need a sitter and which twenty do not, which is the difference between an anxious trip and an easy one.