Science becomes your gardener

Articles Required: A potted plant, a pot full of water, a piece of cotton string.

Many people are fond of indoor plants. But they hesitate to go in for them only because of the extra care they call for. For instance, who would look after them when the whole family is away on a vaca­tion? At some places the neigh­bours might take care of them, but you don't always have such caring neighbours. Then what to do? Shouldn't one have indoor plants only because one likes to enjoy some vacation. Now go wherever you want to without worrying for your plants. In your absence, the science will take over the task of watering your plants. Well, get to know here how it's done.

Place your water container at some high place and put your potted plant somewhere near it, at the bot­tom, as shown in the figure here. Now take your cotton string and insert its one end in pot's soil and dip the other in the container. As you do it, the water will first start moving up through the string and then starts going down alongwith the string to the pot. In scientific terminology this phenomenon is called 'Capillary attraction'. As long as the water remains in the container it will keep on wetting the string and thus flowing out of it to water the plant. So the size of the water container should correspond to the time of your absence and the number of plants to be watered. Yes, remember one important thing: for each plant there should be a different string although the water container can remain the same.