You can buy lights specifically for growing plants, but they’re often expensive. If you don’t have such a spot-we don’t-you’ll need to add lights above your plants to keep them from getting leggy and unhealthy. If you have a good south-facing attached greenhouse or sunporch, that’s perfect! Seedlings need to be in direct sunlight for most of the day-at least eight hours-or they’ll get long and spindly (“leggy”) in an attempt to grow toward direct sunlight. When it comes to providing light for your seedlings, sunlight is the best. Also, having the bottom soil in each pot be the first to get water and the last to dry out makes sure the seedlings’ roots grow deep looking for water instead of just staying shallow. Since it has to absorb all the way to the top of the soil from the bottom, when the top of the soil is wet, it’s all wet. When bottom watering, on the other hand, one knows exactly when all of the soil has been wetted. Sure one can see when it flows through the pot to the tray, but oftentimes the water has simply found a larger open path through the potting soil and not wetted all of it. Plus, it can be difficult when top watering to know when all of the soil in a pot is wetted. If not watered deeply, regularly, often only the top portion of the soil in each pot is moist, encouraging the roots to remain shallow since they have no reason to grow deeper looking for water and nutrients and are punished with dry soil for doing so. When seedlings are watered from the top down, the soil in the top of the pot gets priority on water it’s the first to get wet and often the last to dry out. Not only does this avoid the “blow out” scenario, but it also helps make sure the soil is wet all the way down to the bottom of the pot and not just on top. Bottom watering just means pouring water into the container holding the pots instead of into the pots, letting the soil in the pots soak it up from the bottom. We’ve moved mostly to bottom watering for two reasons: no soil blow-outs and it’s better for the roots. I don’t know if I’d trust re-using one that had previously been filled with cleaning solutions, but they’re inexpensive enough at any hardware store or online. The first trick is to use a household sprayer to spray water on the top of the soil before seedlings sprout and while they’re small. However, even though all you’re doing is pouring water onto seedlings, it can be tough to water them without a bunch of soil “blowing out” of each pot-and possibly with it your newly planted seeds.
It’s no big deal and certainly not rocket surgery. I mean, really, you just put water on them.
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