Testimonials

Easy way to keep your plants alive
By
Jim C. (Seattle, WA)
I’ll start by saying, I’m not much of a greenthumb. One of my friends gave me a little bonsai tree as a housewarming gift a year or so ago, and it has since turned a nice crisp yellow because I put the plant in a room I don’t often frequent, and kept forgetting to water it. Since then, I’ve started using these hydrospikes to keep my plants watered without constantly having to remember when I last watered them. Works really well! I keep a cup of water hidden behind the pot, and I fill the cup maybe once every couple weeks. It definitely makes it easier to keep your plants nice and green.

Every once in a while, I’ve managed to leave the plant unattended for too long and it sucks the entire cup dry — at which point, it’s easy to get it going again, just refill the spike with water up to the brim to get the water flowing again.

All in all, I think it’s a good product, works well, and seems to be cheaper than some of the equivalents. Will be buying some more if I get some more plants!

I’m amazed – perfect for hot summer balcony plants!
By
Valentina (Fair Lawn, NJ)
I bought one pack with some big reservations. Plants on my balcony are constantly dry, no matter how much I water them – and it’s messy with water going everywhere. I read instructions carefully, but they’re very simple.

I filled each spike with water, put a big, filled to the top, Poland Spring 1L bottle next to plants in the planter, put the spike in the middle of each plant and put the little tube from the spike into the big water bottles. That was Thu night, and Sunday night, after 3 days of 90+ weather, and my balcony getting full sun all day [western exposure], I went out, as usual, to water all my plants, and to check on the 2 with spikes. I was amazed to find wet soil and both water bottles more than half empty! What a relief and surprise. That means I can probably refill the water bottles once a week and not worry too much about my plants during the week. Love the product!

Good system
By
Paul M. Koshiol “Gear Guy” (Rockville MD)
Bought a set of these for my wife’s office plants. So far they work exactly as advertised and the plants are healthy and happy. I used one in a six inch pot and two in a 12 inch and that seems adequate.

For folks that are having trouble with over watering, make sure that the water jar is BELOW the bottom tip of the watering stake. (which is mentioned in the instructions but the illustration is vague) If it is level or above the water stake will draw too much water.

Hydrospike
By
Ann
These actually seem to work pretty well. We bought some for a very large fern that we bring in during the winter months. We are going to be on vacation for over a week and wanted to make sure the fern got watered, without the need to have someone come into the house and water it.

We tested it before we left. We bought a 3 pack and put them in 3 different containers around the fern. We found that they were about the same as watering our plant 1/2 of the water it needed. We then bought another 3 pack. Perfect amount of water!

Our fern is HUGE though and really takes a ton of water. It is about 3 1/2 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. Without the spikes, we had to water it every other day and about 32 ounces of water each time. These spikes really do the job!

Good product – Lives up to the name
By
LuN3yDaV3
I bought these to keep my plants watered while I was away for Christmas vacation. I was debating whether to use the glass globe type self-watering kits, but since they are only supposed to last for 3-5 days I needed something better. I somehow came across these hydrospikes a couple days before I was leaving. Thanks to Amazon’s quick overnight shipping, I had them in time to give it a try. The packaging was extremely easy to open. Just pop open and uncoil the watering tubes. You have to then open the green cap and fill with water. This helps to start the siphoning process I believe. After inserting the spikes into the soil, I filled a gallon-sized bowl with water and placed the other end of the tubes inside the bowl. The only negative thing I found at this point was that the tubes seemed to just float on top of the water. This could be due to their light weight and that the tubes wanted to coil back up. I fixed this by weighting the tubes down into the bottom of the bowl with a small metal wrench. If I had more time I probably could have found a better solution for the tube problem.

I left for vacation on Dec 18th and returned Jan 4th. When I came back, my 3 plants were fortunately still alive and well. I have 2 medium sized plants and 1 small one. Each had their own spike. The water in the bowl was a little less than half empty compared to where it was when I left (to the very brim). So the spikes supplied just enough water to keep the plants going for just over 2 weeks. I probably could have gone a month using these spikes and the amount of water in the supply bowl. This product worked great for what I needed it to do. Maybe if the kit came with it’s own weights for the tubes, I’d give it 5 stars.

Keeps your plants watered and healthy
By
K. P. Walters (New York, NY)
I purchased this watering system in preparation for summer travel. I have been using it for about a week and it works great. My outdoor plants have not drooped or looked parched once since I set-up the spikes. My one piece of advice to you is that if you have plants that are on the larger side, especially plants which are located outside, you might want to purchase more than one set since these plants might require two spikes depending on the length of your travel.

Almost perfect portable plant watering solution
By
A. Acosta “blackPowerRyder” (Florida)
I never grew a plant in my life until July 2010.I purchased a small amount of plants from the home depot. Since then I have gone plant crazy,spending about $2000 worth of small plants,organic soil,organic plant food,plants pots,seeds,and a couple grow lights. Very quickly I learned how difficult it was too keep my plants watered in this 90+ degree weather in florida.I use filtered water to water my plants so it’s time consuming and it’s money. The soil gets dry quick down here.If I skipped 1 day of watering my plants will suffer damaged. Most of my plants need 2 to 4 times watering per day to stay healthy. I’m trying to grow everything under the sun that is edible and not grown on a tree. Thanks to these Hydro Spikes I can skip up to 4 days of water some plants,and can skip 1 day on the bigger plants,but that’s only dependent on the water pot size and how many spikes I use. This is the perfect way to grow my organic garden using distilled water not that metal and chemical traced hard water from my county supply. Also when it rains I have to fill the water containers even less too

Vacation Saver
By
S. Blaylock (Valley of the Sun)
Went on a month long vacation and all three plants connected to this system were in great shape upon our return.
So for us, it worked well.

Self-watering plant set
By
Mar
This is an excellent product. I arrived quickly and performed as described. It has been working very well.

It works
By
GH
When I first set these up (following the instructions on the package), I didn’t see how they would work. But, after a time I noticed the water level in my reservoir bottle beginning to drop. I was amazed. The flow rate is slow, so if you have a very large pot you will need more than one Hyrdospike.

Other reviews:
” I love how the HydroSpike works, it really is easy to set up and forget it, and my plants are really doing well”
Mary B.
Canton OH
“This is the system I was looking for, easy to use, very affordable, and I’m having great results”.
Jim R.
Boston MA
“I travel a lot on business and I really love to have growing things around my house, so this was a great answer to my problem of who to water the plants while I’m gone, so thank you.”
Mike L.
San Antonio TX

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but the similarly designed Hydrospike is a better option, June 18, 2011
By
mitzo1 “mitzo1” (Plano, TX) – See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Self-Watering Probes – Vacation Plant Waterers – 5 Pack (Misc.)
My conclusions were based on several fairly unique factors that clearly won’t apply in all situations, so please bear that in mind while you read this.

Factor #1: North Texas has been experiencing severe heat, weeks before summer officially starts.
Factor #2: Most of my plants are outdoors in 11 inch tall, plastic, terra cotta pots, and all of them are exposed to direct sun for several hours during the hottest part of the day. All of them are using two probes.
Factor #3: Three other outdoor plants are in much smaller glazed ceramic pots and use only one probe each.

Under these conditions, most of the probes in the larger pots have been drying out every day, thus rendering their siphoning ability useless. This has not been an issue with the smaller pots.

When the probes dry out, the instructions from both companies say the probes must be reconditioned by soaking them for 15 minutes before filling them with water and inserting them back into the soil.

This may seem like a minor point, but the Hydospike probes have a clear plastic section at the top that allows you to quickly determine if the probe needs to be reconditioned. Unfortunately this is not the case for these probes, with their opaque, dark green plastic. Aside from the fact that they cost marginally more, this is the only reason why I recommend the Hydrospike probes to these.