I have the small ones in trays, and the bigger ones mostly separate. But everything is too crowded ;-)

Karin

Anna,

I have mine in trays. I have LOTS of plants so if they were in saucers I would be watering 24/7. If you decide on trays, make sure your pots are elevated so they do not sit in water.

Linda

I use saucers inside trays that are designed for plants, they have grids that keep the pots elevated from the bottom of the tray and can be used for holding moisture for humidity. Saucers because plants vary in their moisture needs. If you noodle around on this Forum you will find impressive methods people use with egg crate, blankets or matting, and wick set ups.
I live in a dry area . If you live in a humid area , you might not need to add moisture to the air .

I still top water, even with about 100 plants; I keep thinking of experimenting with wick watering next time I re-pot, but so far haven't added wicks. Exception: I DO have 4 special self-watering pots that I use for my few minis. These work just dandy and I couldn't grow the teeny tiny's before I got these pots, so wicking them has been a good thing. But with only four of them, I can keep watch on them very well. I'm kind of leery of trusting all the rest to wicks and I do like top watering the standards and semi's because it makes me look over each individual plant quite regularly. (But yes, it does take a chunk of time - and so did washing out and drying those hundred or so empty saucers, which I finally got around to doing yesterday - Whew!)

Do you think that air flow between the plants is better when they're on individual saucers vs. being grouped together on a tray? I mean, I kind of thought that the trays would block the air that is able to move between shelves on my wire stand. Is that a non-issue?

I use saucers but with lights I usually sit them in trays. That's just how I do it :). I bottom water and there was a whole thread on another group saying I didn't wick so I'm not going there but there is a thing that looks like a wick in the hanging out of the bottom.

I'm old so I had was are apparently called Hydro-wick pots. These have an attached saucer and came with a wick and that's what I used when I started. I didn't remember the name but someone on eBay had an unused one and that the name on the paper tag. I expect that explains why I do this. Eventually you couldn't buy those pots any more.

I recently lined some of my shoeboxes (great things Sterilite shoeboxes from the Dollar Store - squarer and flatter than Walmart's) with batting and am using it on a bunch of tiny plantlets. It's working fine as a mat system but I won't continue it when they grow up.

Diana

I looked at your stands on the other thread. I have the same baker's rack style meant for ventilation. I don't use trays on those, just saucers. Because the shelves are meant to provide healthy air circulation.
Using trays would block the ventilation. I use trays on other set ups where the shelf base is not a rack but is solid. As long as leaves are not touching it might not matter. However, if Linda uses trays, then her advice is the "gold standard" at this time on the Forum ! I alternate top and bottom watering. Now when I repot a place a wick in the pot. That way I can experiment with a few plants at a time to make sure the wick is working well. Rather than overcrowd my shelves I set up various other arrangements.
For more serious growers who have specialized shelves and air circulation , most use trays, wicks, egg crate or mats. When I first joined the forum , I read up on this on a lot if older threads. The best set up seems to be using what is called egg crate custom fit to insert in trays and then use wicks. After I read the posts , I picked up some tips and ideas and adapted. Karin is also a great resource and a frequent reader and contributor to the Forum who has posted a lot of photos of her set ups. She has a large collection. My collection is the same size as yours , probably. I mostly check everything every other day when watering. Joanne

This post was edited by fortyseven on Mon, Oct 13, 14 at 12:54