Watering an indoor palm

Like all plants, the trick to keeping an indoor palm tree healthy is to give it water. It's sometimes frustrating because a lot of time you don't know if you have given it too much, or too little. In the gardening world, this is what is known as a plant's cultural requirements. And, unfortunately, if you just ask the cashier at Home Depot how to care for a plant, you may as well take it directly to the dumpster right after you pay for it.

Knowledge is power. And it's life for your plants, so do your homework. For this Kentia palm, I not only got advice from Kevin Williams in person (he lives here in Phoenix), I read his book. It's also a good idea to learn a bit about where a plant lives naturally. Luckily, this was also covered in Kevin's book. The Kentia comes from The South Pacific. The weather there is tropical, like your house. The temperatures never get below the fifties or above the eighties. Sounds nice!

You can get another clue from the soil that the plant is planted in. A really nice plant like this one, which is fairly expensive, is planted in a nice sandy mixture, and I can tell by touching it. And the fact that it's sandy means that it should be watered often, every week, but, and here is the important part, allowed to drain. This is what you do:

Water the plant slowly and throughly. Watch the water as it drains into the cache-pot. Then remove the plant, put it on something temporarily to protect your carpet, and go dump the cache-pot. The point is, don't let the water stand in there! It's bad for the plant, and frankly, it can cause a stink in your house. You want the water to be drawn up through the roots of the plant to make the palm tree grow, not feed bacteria at the bottom of the pot.

Yes, it's a bit of trouble, but look at this plant, it's gorgeous! Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, however, is not impressed.