My New Water/pH/Light Gauge (THANKS MOM!)

My Mom and I went out succulent shopping in her neck-of-the-woods, i.e. Northern Nevada. Needless to say, I didn't find a whole lot of plants there, but they did have some at Lowes, which I'll tell you about later. Anyway, I saw this at Lowe's for only about $8! I wanted it, but my Mom insisted that she had one at home she could give me. She's not into the light/pH gauge part of this, so she said I could have it. She has one like Donna's that tests only the water. I was so excited to take this home! (Click photo above for closeup of the water gauge).

Okay, so I got home yesterday and boy was I tired. (I'm sick; my hubby was sick all week and gave it to me). Anyway, I had to check all my plants, which I did and the crunching sound alone, as I stuck the metal part in the sand told me that my plants were really, really dry. Anyway, the needle didn't move. The only plant that was doing fine was our Staplia plant, that is in a plastic pot! That might be why it's new arms are growing so fast! I spent a really, really long time watering all my plants. That's what I get for buying so many.

Here's a picture of my new water gauge along with some new finds up at my Mom's and a couple of friends who HAD to be in the photo...hee-hee!

So this morning I decided to check my plants with my new water gauge and I was a little disappointed. When I put them in the pots, the gauge said they were dry already! The soil still seemed a little moist to me though! Here's the thing though, when I stuck it into my plants that had plastic pots, they were still showing a bit wet. I'm thinking this may be caused by a couple of things: 1) The plants sucked up the majority of the water as they were extremely over-dry, even wilting quite a bit, and that's what succulents do; their leaves act like little water reservoirs; 2) Terracotta doesn't hold water very well at all, but plastic and glazed pots do; and 3) My water gauge isn't too accurate, meaning I'll have to keep in mind that it only reads true or obvious moisture. Still, I realize that these terracotta pots aren't all they're cracked up to be! I need to move my plants into glazed pots or even plastic pots eventually. Otherwise I will be watering an awful lot during the summer!

BTW...the needle doesn't move a bit when I check out the pH. I'm not sure why, so I'll have to test it out!