Ecscuba said: ... With my fungus gnat problem I've had this winter I assume I've watered too much and question my misting knowledge too. The larger plants get soaked and the little seedlings I usually mist with a spray bottle twice a day. I'm still trying to figure out if I'd be better off just soaking the seedlings every few days or if the spray bottle is what I should be doing. ...
I figure that any seedling with even one pair of true leaves already has a rootlet that reaches pretty far down into the flat or cell or pot. As long as the mix is moist down there, the seedling has water. If the upper layer is drier, good. Less damping off and maybe fewer insects.
I think misting after emergence is probably a bad idea, but a totally dry surface "makes me nervous" and I still sometimes mist or top-water. But I think it's less than ideal, and part of my "I can't stop over-watering" issue.
(BEFORE emerging or sending out a rootlet, seeds need moisture right near them. Hence humidity domes and maybe misting UNTIL seedlings start to emerge.)
I tried bottom-watering after so many people said it was The Only Way. But after carrying the trays back and forth to and from the bathtub, I clogged my bathtub's drain and never really got them uniformly damp.
Of course I found a gadgety way to deal with that.
But it's my
simplest Rube Goldberg method.
Now I lay down a piece of absorbent cloth between the flat, cells or pots and the water-holding 1020 tray they sit in.
(I use cotton flannel, but an old Tee short doubled, or denim, or water-absorbent felt would work. You might have to wash the felt to get rid of water-repelling coating or "size".)
I never add enough water to see it standing
above the absorbent felt. I just add enough water to fill some of the "grooves" in the 1020 tray, and
make the felt obviously moist. Since the felt touches the soilless mix in every cell, I know that the bottom layer of the mix in every cell is exactly as damp as the felt.
If the mix wicks well at all, it must also be damp for another inch or two above the bottom. A mix with any peat or bark fines will wick water up higher than that.
But I keep a "mini-mulch" of bark shreds or chips on top so I KNOW I have a dry surface. Then I'm not SURE that the cell is moist everywhere a root might be, so I revert to over-watering, or at least top-watering, once a week or so.
The nice thing for me is that the flannel in the bottom of the tray ALSO protects against my over-watering from the top! Within the cells, capillary action pulls the water to fill the mix fairly uniformly, and gravity assures that the bottom of the cell has a little more water than the top. The flannel touches that bottom layer, and
pulls excess water OUT of the cell. No water-logging! No root rot!
It even shares the excess water from one cell with other cells that might be thirstier!
http://garden.org/ideas/view/R...
