I started my reply to the sticky post on soil with an explanation of my local weather.
https://garden.org/thread/view...
This can be summarised as:-
lower than ideal temperatures
high rainfall
relatively low light levels due to the northern latitude
My main interest is aloes (both species and hybrids) with a few mammillaria, echeveria, haworthiopsis, By far the biggest part of my collection is hybrid aloes. Its difficult to know the exact taxonomy/parentage of these plants but many are heavily influenced by species plants from Madagascar
All my plants are indoors . This deals with the temperature problem but reduces my light availability and airflow.
Hybrid aloes can be a sensitive to over watering. Even just slightly too much water (in my environment) can lead to compromised roots and curling leaves. The lower than ideal light also i think can, at times, discourage the plants from growing strongly. What this all adds up to is quite a balancing act for me with watering. I pretty much need to make sure i dry out each time.I tried various approaches to this including wooden sticks and water meters. As my soil is very gritty , both of these had a tendency to indicate the soil was dry when it was not. I also think i have an inbuilt tendency to want to water
This can affect my decision making when it comes to things like looking at wooden sticks
I also do not water in winter unless the plants look in real trouble. So from oct through to march my plants are pretty much dormant.
In the end i resorted to weight. What i did was leave my plants long enough be be sure they were dry and put them on a small set of scales like this.
I then took the weight in grams and put in on a plant label in the pot. This is the base weight. Every few days I would weight the plant quickly and only water those that were at or close to the base weight. As an experiment I also recorded the dates of each watering and the number of days since the last water for each plant on a card like this
What I quickly realised was that different plants started to diverge with some needing water every say every 14 days and others much sooner. There can also be quite a variation with the same plant depending on conditions and time of year.
There are some drawbacks with this method. It a bit slow and laborious, and if the plant is growing strongly the base weight needs to be increased.
I quit filling out the cards each time as I don't need to. I am either close to the base weight and watering or not.
I should also point out that the best tool in a plant keepers arsenal is their own eyeballs. Most of the time you get to know what you plants want be looking at them constantly and noticing the small changes.
Steve
