Starting seeds and vacations

[luigiwu]

The other thing you can do is create a little self watering feeder bottle (to not deal too much with hoses and water supplies etc.) Depending on the size of your pots/seedling cells, you need to assess how much water you'll let your pots sit in. You can then drill the tiniest hole to maintain a very low water level. I've made these for all my indoor plants with plastic bottles, works like a charm.
For small seedling cells, I would spread a piece of fleece or something maybe (to work as a capillary mat) and then set the water level very low (controlled by hole size and location of hole.)
The guy in the youtube vid fills his bottle through the bottom hole. Since my bottom hole is small, I plug it with my finger and just open the top lid and fill it up that way (to create the vacuum required.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffe7...-DCeKqvfj7C0oA

[jmsieglaff]

Thanks luigiwu! I'm going to do some experimenting with this approach--I think a very small hole very near the bottom of the bottle will put out a very thin layer of water, which is what I'd be after. Whatever I end up doing I'll post my methods and results hoping it helps others.

[luigiwu]

I would also always recommend having a small fan on a timer when growing indoors.
To be honest, it does make a me a little nervous about having little cells sitting in water. (I am less concerned with bigger containers.) Why not do a sacrificial test right now of what happens when you leave your seed cells alone for a week? do they dry out?

[jmsieglaff]

Good point. The peppers will be in squares at that point and onions are in large containers, so those I think would be ok. The lettuce and broccoli will be in the smaller cells. I'll sow some test subjects and see how they do.

[jmsieglaff]

So I'm running an experiment to see how self watering seedlings in a flat using a drink bottle with a small hole in the bottom (more accurately on the side very near the bottom) goes. The two pepper plants are extras and are potted up into ProMix. The lettuce and broccoli seedlings are in the Jiffy seed starting mixture--basically emulating what I would put in it on a larger scale (minus the onions which I don't have extras of). The lettuce/broccoli have been in there since Wednesday and peppers just since last night. We'll see how the sacrificial lambs do compared to the rest of plants that I'll take care of like usual.

The pepper photos are shortly after transplant and watering in. However looking at them today, the soil still looks rather wet compared to the ones not sitting in water, but we''ll how it goes.

[jmsieglaff]

I wanted to share some results on this experiment. Bottom line: a small hole in a water bottle placed into a tray that holds water works great for a vacation care taker, even for seedlings of peppers, onions, broccoli, kale, lettuce and herbs.

Below are pictures taken the day before we left for a 6 day vacation and then pictures from when we returned. The soil in all containers was very moist and plants very happy.

For more long-term my trial lettuce, peppers, and broccoli results were interesting. The broccoli and lettuce were in small 6-cell seed starting plastic inserts. Both did well for a couple of weeks in a tray of water constantly being replenished with water from the bottle. After maybe 3 weeks the broccoli grew unhappy with its wet feet. The lettuce did well up through the duration of the experiment ~5 weeks. The peppers are growing in larger containers, 4 inch squares and continue to do well, just as well as their neighbors who are watered once every ~5 days. So even though I would expect peppers to grow unhappy with the wet feet, the taller containers are likely resulting in much of the root zone not being too wet. I'll continue to update the pepper results.

[luigiwu]

Really awesome! I adore the indoor feeder bottle as well. Its working great for my indoor (Jade) plants too. (otherwise, I manage to kill them too.) If you get a good peat-based potting mix and drench it well before you leave, I can believe that it retains enough water to have it nice for the plants for 6 days (assuming there is no fan - fan tends to dry out thing quite a bit faster...)
Did you get your cell packs from Greenhouse megastore? I'm considering an order... For lettuce, are you planting one seed per cell?

[jmsieglaff]

Luigiwu, I agree on drenching the mix will keep it moist enough for 6 days without a fan. One of my flats of peppers I just put some water in the bottom of the tray without a bottle and they are just fine. The smaller 4 and 6 cell plastic containers I knew would dry out, so the the bottle was necessary for those and it worked perfectly.

I don't plant one seed of lettuce per cell, but thin once or twice to one plant per cell. Speaking of which I need to do my final lettuce thinning and get these plants out into the cold frame! I get my greenhouse-type plastic sheets from a local garden supply store. They sell them by the single sheet, which is nice so I don't have to order a very large quantity.