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ahappycamper

Watering seedlings from the top and from the bottom

8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago

Last year while germinating seeds indoors I was running into damping off issues. I know its been recommended that watering from the bottom will help to prevent damping off as well as watering less

A lot of instructionals that I see recommend keeping your tray in the puddle of water until the top is mildly moist.

However, thinking about this method as I was putting it into action, wouldn't this actually drench the soil and make it unnecessarily wet compared to attacking the seed with water from the top? The reason being that the seeds are closer to the top then they are to the bottom especially in the case of smaller seeds that are only 1/4 of an inch from the top. By watering the bottom it seems you would have less control over how much water gets to the seed but also you would be making areas of the medium wetter than they would need to be before actually rising to the seed.

Or maybe I'm doing this wrong and when watering from the bottom you're not supposed to keep it watered until the top is noticeably wet? In that case it seems difficult to gauge how much water to use because the cells intake unevelny and they are also opaque which makes it hard to see how wet the medium is.

I'm not even close to the level of 99.9999% of you when it comes to knowledge but this is just something that I was pondering that I hope someone can clear up for someone still learning.

Thanks

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