Mitch Baker: I'm Mitch Baker with American Plant and we're talking about July gardening tips. Right now, we're going to talk about caring for your house plants while you are away on that great July vacation. Watering your house plants has always been a challenge but today, it's easier than ever. I've got three surefire methods here to keep your house plants watered while you are away on vacation. Let's start with the plant nanny over here. Now, this is just using an ordinary soda bottle or plastic water bottle. It's just a terracotta or ceramic portion that you would thoroughly wet. Fill the water bottle, invert it into the cone in the soil and then that water is slowly absorbed over a period of time to keep it evenly moist, foolproof. The key though, you got to water the plant first so the soil is wet to transfer the moisture. Second, these little probes have been around for a long time, still very reliable, with same sort of ceramic or terracotta cone, a water reservoir with a filler tube that goes down into a large body of water and finally, we have the gel spike. This is just a gel type water; 99.

5% pure water and 0.

5% vegetable gum and aloe. Now one of those small gel spikes is good for about a ten-inch container like this Raphis Palm that we're showing. For bigger container, you want to use two, three or more and also for a longer period of time, if you're going to be away for more than two weeks, say, then you are going to use more of any of these methods to keep your plant watered. So if you follow these tips, when you return from vacation, you should come back to a houseful of thriving plants. Next, we'll talk about summer pruning.