I've been attempting to have house plants for the last year or two, and have difficulty with getting watering right.
Particularly, I've found that I consistently end up with my plants getting too dry. i.e. My herbs are visibly wilting (and recover v. quickly we watered), and the soil is dry enough that it has pulled away from the side of the pot, and/or pooring water onto the soil leads to it visibly not being absorbed, but just running off large portions of the soil.
Given that this happens a lot, I then find it hard to re-hydrate the soil.
As a result, for the last 3-4 months I've been trying a diferent approach of "poor 'some' water in every now and then.
...
I water each of my plants ~ every 7-10 days. In general, by that time the soil is entirely dry to the touch at the surface, and the herbs may have just started to wilt if it's been relativley hot.
I water the plant by taking it to a sink and completely drenching it: Running water gently into the pot for a minute or two, letting it sit in the sink to drain out for 5 minutes, then repeating a couple of times (so that the water is really permeating fully through out the soil, since I observe that dry soil is relatively hydrophobic). Then I sit it in its saucer by the sink for half an hour or so, emptying the saucer every 5-10 minutes, until there's absolutely no water leaving the pot. Then I put it back by the window.
It seems to be working pretty well so far, the various plants that I've been treating like this have been growing very happily on my North-West facing windowsill.
Question:
Is this watering pattern OK? What issues might it have, and what problems might those issues cause? Are there better ways to handle watering plants given that I'm moderately forgetful and thus will definitely allow the plants to dry out at some point.