Watering from bottom-up or top-down?

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juststartingout Spring Valley, NY Aug 22, 2008

Which is the best method of watering houseplants? Does it depend on the plant? I"ve read info. on both types of watering procedures but still don't have a "good" idea about what would be best for the plants I have.

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Aug 22, 2008

Bottom up has the advantage of not getting water on the leaves which is important for some plants like African violets. It also is more "foolproof" in terms of getting the soil wet all the way through--when potting mix dries out it can be hard to rewet it, so if you're watering from the top if you don't give it a thorough watering sometimes the mix doesn't get wet all the way through. But the downside is if you tend to water a little too frequently anyway, since bottom watering is more thorough I suppose you may have a higher chance of overwatering your plants if you do it too frequently than you would with top watering (and I suspect for plants that really hate wet feet such as cacti/succulents bottom watering may tend to be more problematic). Also if you forget about the plant sitting in the tray of water and leave it there for too long that could cause problems for plants that don't like wet feet. And lastly, salts from water and fertilizer tend to build up in the soil over time, and if you're constantly watering from the bottom you are just building up more and more salts and never rinsing them out, versus if you give it a good thorough flushing from the top and letting water drain out the bottom it'll help flush out those salts.

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juststartingout Spring Valley, NY Aug 23, 2008

thanks for this info.....

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