Gardening Gadgets
Thirsty Light has just come out with two new designs of their product to make my life a little easier. When the weather warmed, I hung a few of my plants up outside. In order to check the soil, I had to get up on a bench, and pick my way across the handrail. It was so inconvenient (not to mention a bit dangerous) that my plant suffered for lack of water, or rather, my lack of willingness to scale the front of my house. This little doodad has changed all that.
The curved Thirsty Light in Action
This is the new Thirsty Light! It’s curved at the top so you can see the blinking light from a more comfortable angle. This model is also water resistant, so it’ll tolerate being splashed. Which is a good thing, because I like to stand on the porch and give the plants a shower with a garden hose. The new Thirsty Light Curved model hits the dirt at just the right angle, so it gets an accurate reading of the moisture level in the soil around the root crown, while hanging down over the edge of the basket so all you have to do is glance up to see if your light is blinking. It’s perfect for plants in hard to reach places, such as hanging baskets, or plants that are out of reach like those on tops of bookshelves, or near skylights. There are many places where plants would be happy, if you could only get up there at the right times to get them water.
-On top of your fridge or cabinets in a sunny kitchen
-Hanging baskets beneath skylights
-On top of bookshelves
-Hanging baskets from branches of trees (My neighbor does this and it has a great effect on her garden, it adds dimension and is great with shade-loving plants)
-Attached to fences, especially the moss lined baskets that attach to privacy fences.
I have a water-loving Dracaena that lives on top of a bookshelf. I’ve stuck a curved Thirsty Light in its pot to remind me to get up there and water, and it has flourished ever since.
Thirsty Light also came out with a double length version of its original product. This is for large containers that need a more accurate depth reading. Water evaporates from the top of the dirt first. The dryness works its way down through the soil. If you have an indoor tree, or other large pot, it’s ok for the top few inches of soil to dry out, so the roots have some room to breath before you add more water. This is where Thirsty Light XL comes in handy. The probe is a full foot long to reach down into those big containers and see what’s really going on among the roots of your tree. This new product has made my Ficus Benjamina the happiest plant in my house. I over watered until I got the Thirsty Light XL. When I put the larger version in the pot, it assured me that the roots were well watered. I stopped bombarding it with daily waterings, and the color in the leaves is much deeper.
This pot is 18 inches deep and the new Thirsty Light XL reaches into the dirt perfectly
My Ficus is in a rather large pot on a stand. The pot is coated metal and hold 5 gallons of dirt.
The new Thirsty Light XL
The new Thirsty Lights are water resistant and have five levels of sensitivity. The light blinks in different patterns to let you know how dry the soil is. A great new version of one of my favorite gardening tools.
dear ivy, I would like to email you a question about a houseplant problem i may or may not be having (i don’t know diddily about what i’m doing) but i can’t find where to send emails to! can you put an “email ivy” button on your page somewhere? that would be helpful, either it’s not there or i’m too dense to find it, though if the latter is true it might explain my gardening problems!
- cornfused in Columbus