Easy Gardening at the Apartment - Part 1

I must admit, many find the apartment pretty. But really, the "curb appeal" that most see is attributable to a small but colorful garden that we religiously maintain every weekend.

Watering the Plants

I don't know of many other landlords who visit their property as regularly as I do. In fact, many ask me why I bother to visit the apartment every weekend. There is a bunch of reasons why I choose to do so, but one of these is that we want to see and water the plants at least once a week. We've had tenants who volunteer to water the plants in the plant boxes of their units. I guess some fancy themselves as gardeners or 'green thumbs' of sort and are well meaning. Generally, we let and thank them if they do want to water the plants. And they do water them - for a few weeks, that is. The motivation generally wanes and so we don't rely on tenants to do the watering themselves. At most, that chore will be spotty.

The challenge to watering the planst happens when the apartment is full (all units occupied). The apartment doesn't have an external faucet outside. We intentionally didn't have one installed for fear that tenants would frivolously use it to wash their cars. So what we do is to bring our own water. Friends ask us why don't we just tap into one of the units' faucet with a long hose. Sure, we could do that but that means a couple of negatives for the tenant who we tap into:

• It's a hassle and inconvenience. It would require us to enter the unit and secure the hose into the faucet at the laundry area. Corz, this won't be possible at all if the tenant is using the faucet.
  
  
• It can be messy. Where there's usage of water, leaks and spills may occur. Droplets of water on the floor may not mean a lot but for the tenant, it may result into slips and accidents.

We carry water in a couple of carboys or huge plastic containers. At the apartment, we transfer the water into a pail and use a dipper (tabo) to water the plants. It's simple, but takes some effort loading and unloading the carboys into the back of the car.