going to cali for three weeks?
 

I've got a question for all of you!

how do you keep your plants watered (especially pleurothallids and other water loving orchids) while you are on vacation?

I usually have my plant sitter help me (she grows orchids too!) but this year she's not able to so i have to find a way to keep them watered.

Thanks for all of your input!

First, have a safe and happy trip to California. Here is what I do when I know I'll be gone for a long time...I water every single plant fully and completely. Put all of them in a small, sunny space that gets lots of fresh air. Run a humidifier that is controlled by humidistat, say a little prayer and enjoy my trip.

After several times of being gone and worrying about my plants, I have found my orchids to be hardy and resilient. Ironically you are going to a biosphere that has had drought conditions for three years!

Thanks for the tip !

Uh,,,, I would not place plants in the sunny location while gone for that long.
Especially small and water-loving things like what grow. They might not exactly die, but they might suffer near death and recovery might take forever.

Since I started too many orchids, I could not go any longer than 2 weeks at a time, and to my surprise, as Matt says, none of my orchids died!
Some non-orchid plants dried up crispy dead. I felt bad but they were also highly replaceable.

My collection is made up of mostly paphiopedilums.
I do have a bunch of this and that.
What I did when I was away for two weeks in the past, I would water everything really good the night before taking off. I mean good! like soaking for half an hour. Drain them all well. If a bit of water stayed at the saucer, it's fine.
Move every single orchids from the window sill and move them to kitchen where it is rather dark but also much cooler than window area since sun does not reach my kitchen.
The ones that are "near" sunny window, I would move them too or I got lazy and just put wrapping paper on top of them so the sun does not reach them.

I came back, and honestly the last two three days on the trip, all I thought about was how my orchids were doing back home.

Some looked rather tired, especially small ones in small pots like tolumnias and neofinetias, which actually looked quite dehydrated and I freaked out.
Some paphs were pushing new growths and spikes even! How buzzare! lol

I started soaking everyone GOOD.