Simple Tips For Keeping Plants Alive While On Vacation

About This Episode

What happens if your Zone changes? Plus, Grumpy’s tip about how to care for plants while you’re away on vacation.

Question Of The Week

"I live in Fair Play, South Carolina, and recently learned that our plant hardiness zone was changed from Zone 7 to Zone 8. Why? I liked the old Zone 7. I really feel bad for our local nursery that is named Zone 7." -Sandy.

Grumpy's Answer: Climate zones are based on the average coldest winter temperatures experienced in any given area. So with global warming, winters have been getting milder in the last few decades, and the summers have been getting hotter. So the climate zones are marching north at roughly 13 miles a year. So the new USDA plant hardiness zone reflects this, and now for you, an advantage means that you can feel safe growing some plants are previously considered too tender.

Tip Of The Week

How to keep your outdoor potted plants watered while you're away on vacation. This is a personal thing for me because I have a lot of semi-tropical plants that I keep in pots outside, and I bring them indoors for the winter, but what do I do when I'm going away. And so, containers basically need to be watered in warm weather every single day. So, what are you gonna do if you're not there? Well, here's a couple things you can do:

• Transport. Move your potted plants into a cool, dim part of your house like your garage. Like I have a really good spot for that. My garage doors have glass so they can get a little bit light in there, and what I do is I put each plant a top a saucer.
• Water. I water it really well so there's water coming out the bottom, and then I can leave it probably for 10 to 14 days because it stays cool in there, and if there's not any direct sun, so they don't use up very much water.

For smaller plants, this might seem weird, but if you don't have a garage, maybe what you could do is you could put them inside a bathtub or maybe if it's a single plant, you can put 'em in the kitchen sink, and see that way, you can water 'em real good and you don't have to put saucers of water underneath.

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 30 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.