In my experience, if you are watering seedlings more than once a week, you are giving them way more water than they need. I am also a big fan of bottom watering - it causes the roots to grow better and doesn't cause damping off problems.

YMMV,

Mike

I water my seedlings when they need it......and sometimes it's several times a day, but I use a mister. They don't dampen off, because the soil is never too wet, and yet they get adequate humidity from doming if the sun is not directly on them that they don't dry out. I don't bottom water seedling flats when they're tiny, because the soil needs to dry out and you may not get damping off at the crown, but you can rot out the tiny roots that way, and also encourage fungus gnats.

Bottom watering. If you are only away for a couple/few days it shouldn't be an issue. Turn the fan off. You could get a capillary mat if you must, but I've stopped using one.

Dan

You may like to consider something like this. By drilling a very tiny hole on the cap and not on the bottle, you can have a very slow, calibrated and adjustable controlled drip of water for your seedlings for a few days.

The bottom of the bottle is open for refilling and to break the vacuum.

dcarch
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Brilliant invention dcarch!

That *is* clever, but surely it's not for one cell? Several people have suggested bottom-watering. Am I to assume that the packs shown are in a tray and the bottle drips into the tray? Otherwise how do you water each cell in a pack?

This is sort of what I had intuited from other responses. I'm trying to figure out if I can use a number of drip emitters to fill a tray enough during one watering cycle so that the packs could be watered that way. A 1 GPH emitter should be plenty for a 1 hr. cycle--probably need less than that.

Steve,

The water drips down to a tray, and the seedling cells are on an old towel. The towel keeps everything wet.

If you have a larger set up, you can get a 5-gallon bucket, and hot-glue a length of vinyl tubing to the bottle, but don't cut open the bottom of the bottle. The vacuum from the bottle will draw the water from the bucket. Just remember that the system is gravity operated, so near the end the water flow will be less than the begining.

dcarch

An FYI:

I germinate seeds in a plastic to-go tray (it has a lid so I can keep it covered until seedlings appear) and then transplant them into nursery flats. A couple of weeks ago, I transplanted the four largest but has one that was too small. I set the tray in water, let the potting mix get wet again and put it under lights. Sad to say, but I forgot about the seedling.

Yesterday, I saw it and it had wilted so badly it was laying completely on its side. Nevertheless, I put the tray into a tub of water, let the mix get moist again and put it back under the lights. This morning it was standing straight up and looking as healthy as ever.

Mike