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The most common DM I get is some version of “how long does watering take?” The honest answer is about forty minutes, twice a week, and it only got down to that once I stopped treating all two hundred plants as one job.
Zones, not rooms
I split the flat into five zones by how much light and air each spot gets, not by which room it’s in. The balcony rail dries out fastest. The bathroom shelf barely dries at all. Two plants standing a metre apart can be on completely different schedules, and once I accepted that, I stopped killing things.
Each zone gets its own day. Nothing gets watered because it’s Saturday.
A rota that lives on the fridge
It’s a piece of paper. Zone, day, notes. When a plant moves, I move it on the paper. I tried three apps and abandoned all of them within a fortnight — the paper is on the way to the kettle, which is the only reason it works.
The self-watering pots do the heavy lifting
Anything that likes consistent moisture — the pothos, the ferns, the peace lilies — went into self-watering planters and I now top them up once a week instead of checking them every other day. That single change is most of the forty minutes I saved.
They’re wrong for succulents. I learned that twice, which is once more than necessary.
Three plants I’ve given up on
- The calathea. It wants rainwater, 70% humidity and no opinions from me. It gets tap water and crispy edges and we’ve made peace.
- The fiddle leaf fig. Beautiful. Dropped four leaves because I moved it 30cm. It lives where it lives now and I don’t look at it directly.
- Maidenhair fern. Three attempts. I am not the right person for this fern.
There’s no shame in a plant that doesn’t suit your flat. There are thousands of others and most of them are easier.
The thing nobody tells you
Watering is not the hard part. Repotting is the hard part, and it arrives all at once every spring. I now do four pots a weekend from March, so I’m never facing forty in one afternoon.
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