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water Bottom Watering

This only works while your plants are in cups or pots. Take a bucket or other container, place the plants in it, then fill the bucket or other container with water, but only part-way up the side of the cup or pot, close to the top of the soil line, but NOT above it.

Why? Mostly to prevent damping off, which is a form of fungus that can grow on the surface soil. If you get damping off, the stem of the plant will weaken and the plant will fall over and usually die. This isn't limited to brand-new plants, either. Keeping the soil surface dry helps prevent this from starting. Also, if you do think your soil surface is suspect, spray it with hydrogen peroxide.

Oh, and bottom-watering is also supposed to encourage downward root growth, but I'm not sure this is really an issue.
 
What geeme said as well as fungus gnats like wet top soil, fungus gnats are bad! It really is a matter of personal preferance top watering vs bottom watering. But when the plants are young I highly recommend bottom watering. In the wild plants arent bottom watered, so bottom watering isnt absolutely necessary. But there are some advantages to it! Id bottom water them till they get outside. Then let the rain do its thing.
 
Hi everyone. Great forum for a newbie like myself :)
I got my pots filled with clay pellets at the bottom. Will the water still be absorbed this way?
 
If the big bucket of water you put them in has a water level above the level of the pellets at the bottom then I'd think yes.
I bottom watered most of my potted plants this season. They seemed to like it.
 
But make sure to hang onto the pot with the plant in it. I made the mistake of letting a very dry (and because of that light) potted plant go in a large diameter bucket of water. I lost a lot of soil, and had a very wet plant lol.
 
i only bottom water my seedlings when they are in jiffy pellets or something similar. once the plant has a few solid leaves on it i stop worrying about "damping off" and other killer bacteria.
 
Damping off is more an issue of lack of air movement then top/bottom watering.
But if possible bottom water as it does encourage deeper roots early on (especially if you are not quite saturating the soil completely)
 
Bottom watering will help to keep your soil from getting compacted. Your plant will get watered more evenly also. Dumping water on top will expose the roots and you will constantly be spreading soil around to cover them up again.
 
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