Automatic Watering
What do do when you are away from home
If you're away from home for a longer time you might consider automatic watering of your plants because your friend(s) or neighbour(s) don't always have the talent to water your plants correctly. Automatic watering may also be useful if you have a lot of plants and manual watering would mean a lot of work.
An important aspect of correct watering is to prevent waterlogging. Since there is no trivial solution to drain off redundant water the best method for watering would be to give the plant the exact amount of water it needs. This is easier said than done we've found that even the best solution requires some handwork at least once in a month. But this might be long enough for your vacation.
If you're away from home just for two or three days it may be sufficient to dunk your plants the day before you leave. Longer absences require one of these two facilities: hollow ceramic cones that are pressed into the soil are connected to a water reservoir won't need any electricity but the ceramics easily clog and you don't have real control over the amount of water flowing into the pot.
Better but also more expensive are small pump systems that deliver water via flexible tubes coming from a water container. Usually the pump runs once a day and you're able to do a lot of finetuning. We're running such a system for months with great success and need just minimal manual watering. You can find these automatic systems in a DIY store near you. However, it will need some time to get used to these facilities, so better get to know them weeks before you leave the house.