SELF WATERING Planter DIY for $3!!! Easy and Effective Trick to keep your plants happy! Target Pot!

You're here! You caught me dancing with my beautiful Poncea Saltificana. So today I'm so excited to finally bring this video to you guys because it's one video that I searched a lot for. I wanted to learn how to use a self-watering pot, but I wanted to learn how to do one that would be very cheap. There is some self-watering pots out there, but they can be very pricey. And when you have more than 200 plants, you cannot be spending 20 bucks per self-watering planter. So I have experience with one that I kind of DIYed it or made it myself and the help of Target. And I'll show you how you can do a self-watering pot for three dollars and maybe a few cents. So how is that possible? How can you have a self-watering pot for three dollars? I'll let you know in this video. If you're interested, keep on watching. Okay, so here we go. Let me explain myself. So first of all, I think a common problem that we might experience is first we have so many plants and it's hard to keep up with watering them regularly and checking up on them. Second of all, a problem I've been having is that I have a lot of plants like these that they're hanging on macrame and they they're kind of coming out from the macrame and to actually remove the pot. And this one by the way is the one that I saw not already planted like I'm going to show you. This is prior to potting it. So here's a regular Costa Farms pot where it came in and I just popped it in here but I'm about to plant it and do the DIY self-watering planter in front of your eyes. But basically the problem is if you were to just do this, you pot up, you put the Costa Farms pots in this one and this is about eight inches from Target and it's three dollars. And when I bought it, it sells self-watering planters. You see there's a little space here in the bottom. So when I first bought these from Target, I placed my plant in here and even if I had planted it directly in the actual pot because I did for some other plants, the problem was or can be is that when you water it, the water just goes straight down and catches in this little area here. When I open it, you'll be able to understand but basically the pot is up here and then there's another space here and I was noticing the water was collecting down here. So then I even did it on Instagram. I was trying to show you guys while I was trying to see if this pot is really worth or not. So what I did is that after watering them and of course I saw there was excess water in here, I thought if this is a self-watering planter, the water is going to be suctioned back up to the soil and keep my soil mix wet. Well, I did what I just did right now. Obviously there would be water down here and if I would come back and measure the soil, it basically was not wet enough because all the water went down here and then it didn't really disperse evenly. It didn't do like a bottom watering. I'm not sure if I'm explaining to myself exactly but I hope you understand what I'm saying. The thing is, you need to do a little more to these pots. So I thought about what little fix I could do and that's what I demonstrated. I've been doing it in many of my other plants and I'll show you how great they're doing with this little method. Now what you will need is you will need to buy a pot something like this. Like I said, Target has these pots and they have them in different sizes and colors. This size right here, which is like I say a good like eight inches I believe, is three dollars. So they have some smaller ones that are even cheaper and they have some really big ones for like a little bit more. So it's the cheapest ones that I have found and they come in several colors. I've been doing white because of course that matches a little bit more of what I'm doing. So I've been wanting to do this for this plant but I was holding off because I didn't want to just do it. I wanted to show it to you guys in a video so you guys could learn this little trick yourselves and you guys can take advantage of these Target self-watering planters but really make them work because that's what we want. We want it to work and actually be self-watering. So basically what you would have to do, hold on, by the way this Monstera siltipicana you might have seen her in a video when she was found. It was back maybe this summer, maybe six months ago at Lowe's and she was all yellow when I found, we found her. And we took the gamble, we bought her and look how beautiful she's doing. She is nice and green and lush so I'm so excited that we did get her. I almost left her because I thought she was not going to make it but look at that, she's doing great. So the problem I'm experiencing is because I had not done what I was supposed to do yet. When I would water her she wouldn't get evenly watered and see I got some dry leaves and that's what we want to prevent. We want to be able to water them for them to get enough water what they need when they need so we don't accidentally not water them in time and have dry leaves. So I'm going to put some gloves on because this is going to get a little messy and again items that you will need, like I said you will need the pot. You will need, I've been using some kind of macrame rope. I actually had some macrame rope that had gone from a macrame that I was going to make myself. At this point I don't have any so I'm going to do a little cheat here guys. If you can't find any macrame but you have macrame hangers you can always steal a couple of little ropes from in the middle of these little tassels because basically that's the size that you're going to need. And to know what size you're going to need is you're going to have to like measure from the bottom of the pot to approximately the top of the pot. So approximately I'm getting my size right there so these are a good size. So I'm going to just go ahead I'm going to cut it all the way from the top because no need to leave it like short. So I've never done this of stealing it from another macrame but I'm doing it now for the sake of this video. I didn't want to have to go and purchase this but of course you need some kind of rope that maybe will be caught in. One that will let water travel and I've already tested these and these work very well. So that's why that's what I'm doing. Other than that tape. You'll need tape. I had tape here. We'll get the tape in just a moment okay but yes you'll need tape. That's the other little item you will need. So first we're going to start by repotting. Look at these roots. Like I said I've had it sitting here oh my for maybe six months. And look at that because there was water in the bottom. I think it was water always makes roots want to grow towards the water. Oh it's so cool. Okay so again here it is. Now we're gonna gently pull it out of this costa farms pot and we're gonna plant it here. But before that let me let me go get the tape. Give me a moment. Okay so I have a tape here and I'm gonna cut it in several pieces. You'll see that in just a moment. And the jute rope and basically what I'm going to do again now you can see how this planter is. There's that in the inside and this is the little space here where the extra water can be stored so it can suction it back up when the plant needs it. But the problem like I said a lot of times the water was staying down here. The soil was up here and it wasn't really soaking up. I left it. I did it. I put it up here and for other plants and I was measuring the soil and it never was really saturating the soil. So I needed something to kind of pull the water back up to the soil. So what I thought about is just pulling and putting these little ropes into these holes. That's one way like that right. Just I just kind of push it in and then I wanted to stay somewhere up. Like I didn't want it to just fall because I wanted to kind of it to drag this or pull the water up the rope and kind of saturate the soil. So what I do is that I just tape it on the side somewhere like that and then I do I've done two minimum but I've done sometimes in some cases three or you could do four. It doesn't really I think a minimum of two at least. Maybe I'll do three. Okay I'm just I'm making sure it goes in maybe an inch or two because you really want it to be able to touch the bottom of this to get all the water that's all the way to the bottom. So pulling in and see I'm thinking I'm going to run it this way. Okay that's two. So I think two should be enough but like I said you could do four if you wanted to. There's four so you could do the four but at this point I'm just going to do two. Okay so now I'm going to I have my soil mixture here because I'm going to need a little more soil than what's here in this pot and I just wanted to show you my soil mixture here. This is Fox Farm Happy Frog soil mixture and I added perlite and I want to say this is a good like 60 percent and this is like 40 percent perlite and this is just again because we have these plants indoors this especially because mine are indoors and the perlite is going to help aerate the soil and make sure that it's never too compact and because we always want to make sure we have enough oxygen flowing into our roots because they're trying to avoid root rot. We want soil to actually dry in about we don't want soil that stays wet too too long either because it's not good for the roots. So a little demo here. Sometimes I add bark to it to create chunkiness but I think this will definitely be fine for this Monstera according to the plant you're working with. Okay so now I'm going to put bottom layer here something like this okay and then we're going to let me put my gloves on root system is good this is actually going to up pot it just a few a little more which is good it kind of needed it you see kind of full of roots here it's too much work making such a big mess I'm already making it but okay so once I pop it in here you see how there's usually a gap make sure you fill in the gaps you don't want it to have all this extra space here okay I had just watered her so you can see the soil is moist from before from what I just showed you okay so in my experience Monstera siltipicanas are very easy to take care of somebody in my comments in my videos we were talking about the skin damps and moonlight truby eyes and a house how sometimes those are have not been have not been that easy for my care in my care and other people were saying the same thing just have been very slow and yellows a lot this one does get some yellowing here and there but I think it's when I don't water it in time but it's a fast grower which is pretty amazing and fun so if you guys run into one of these I highly recommend it and it can trail up too it likes to wrap itself around thing plant um poles and it's gonna make it have bigger leaves there can even be like like fenestrations on it as the leaf gets bigger so it's a really cool plant I water it when it reaches so wet but then again now it's going to be in a sub-watering planter so I'm not going to have to be so worried about watering it so often because it's going to keep in a reserve of water and it's going to slowly carry that water back up through those little ropes that we put on it so basically that's it it's repotted it's full of it's full of soil right there's no extra space so it's gotten up hot okay so now I'm gonna water it so what happens when we water it and the objective is with these self-watering planters yeah you can you can you can you can even fill it up from here if you wanted that's another trick because the plant's only going to pull up water if it's dry if it's saturated those little ropes are not going to pull up any water it's only going to pull up water if it needs it so you could always just fill it up with water here and not be too worried that it's going to over water your plant again I a lot of times just water from the top but I know at least it's not going to drip water it's not going to spill out from the bottom which is a big advantage when you have any of these macrame hanging planters um you don't want sometimes you have a hole in the bottom the water will spill you have to be careful how you're going to do it or if you have a catch pot you don't want a lot of extra water to just stay on there because it's just directly on the soil this has a space so the water is going to stay separated from the actual soil the little rope is the only one that's going to carry water up which is going to be a little bit at a time only as needed so you're not going to have to worry up it causing root rot okay so this is basically how my little trick was done using this target planter and it was very easy guys it was very easy so I hope my little demonstration helped now I want to go and take you around my house to show you some plant other plants that I've already had potted up in these self-watering planters with these little ropes and let you see how well they're doing so let's this is my plant room I had to show you guys these these are not self-watering pots but oh I'm in love I'm in love how beautiful these are um okay so right over here look at that neon pothos to the left let me get on my bed on the bed it's not my bed but but it's our guest bedroom okay look at this neon pothos what do you think do you think it looks happy well this one has been in one of those self-watering planters let me show you underneath this jungle where are you you see that it's the same planter so basically again I've just been watering it I actually had this one outside hanging in my back patio and um it actually whenever I would see with this plant you can see when it needs water because the leaves will be droopy right now they're really happy but then I would just water it a little bit from the top and that's it I didn't have to worry about taking away extra water because I knew it was gonna do just reserve it for later and then look at this manjula pothos let me get my shadow out of the way look at look at it look at these leaves aren't they gorgeous so this manjula pothos again is in one of those self-watering planters from target and she's happy when I just got her I thought it was going to be hard because I thought that she was browning but I she did great I actually took her to my back patio during the summer moved her back in during this fall and she's been happy so again it's one of these same planters self-watering planters you can see there and we've been doing the same method and been so easy and I don't have to even take it out of there I just water it and again I had these in macrame outside of my back patio and was doing so good and I didn't have to yeah worried they were I didn't have to water them that often to eat also which is really really good so that's it um I wanted to go ahead and show you guys and share with you guys that little trick so this is another plant that I have with this three dollar pot from target and this is a Hoya crimson princess and she is beautiful because she's been doing so great here as you can see look as she climbs up the macrame that's one of the coolest things about these macrame you can also put some vines up and that's what I should do kind of just guide a few in and then they'll go ahead and trail wrap themselves up as you can see there so again she's potted up directly here on this planter and yeah been very easy she's been very happy so this has been a good idea too for the Hoya and let me see what other plant I can find here's another one this is a Hoya hindu rope and she's been doing really good also with this self-watering planter as well you can even see the little ropes there in between here she is and I have another one here as I move across here my plant wall in my living room this also Hoya crimson princess you can see even new growth there and look at the growth and again the pot that I'm using is that one from target and I actually a little tip I bought them online like if you can't find the color or the size you want at target the store you can always purchase them online have them delivered to you that's an option in your area so here she is this is how I have her hanging in this macrame and now it's going to make it so much easier to take care of her and overall for her to get a nice thorough watering and all the soil to be saturated evenly instead of what was happening before when she would get a little she would get just a little bit of water here and there and it wasn't even evenly saturated and I could tell some leaves are drying because of that hopefully we won't get any more yellow leaves and yeah it looks beautiful and now it's easy to take care of and this was not very expensive these macrames I just get them in amazon and pack sometimes of five and I don't know thirteen dollars for like five so you can see when you go to amazon your searches and they're not very expensive and I think it just looks really pretty and I'm really happy with the results and again I'll let you say goodbye to this monstera as I say goodbye to you bye thank you for watching don't forget to subscribe and give it a thumbs up if you enjoy my videos so you can support my channel appreciate it a lot bye