Have you ever sown vegetable seeds and then watered them only to see the seeds float up with the water? Here is a simple way that I avoid that. Rather than watering from the top, I water from the bottom and let the soil/compost/planting mix pull the water up.
Here are some kale seeds I sowed in modules a couple weeks ago.
I placed the modules into a tray with no holes and added water.
After a few hours, the compost within the modules had pulled the water up through the drainage holes at the bottom of the modules and the compost was soon wetted all the way to the surface.
Here is a closeup so you can see the moisture now on the surface, therefore moistening the seeds too:
I placed the modules and tray in the shade to germinate. Once germinated, the seedlings could be watered from above because then they were rooted and wouldn’t be dislodged. Or they could continue being watered from below because that would still work too.
Here are the seedlings today:
The fancy word for how water moves against gravity (up) is “capillary action.” It’s the same principle that allows drip irrigation to spread wide within the dirt below an emitter. Water is sticky; it sticks to other water and it sticks to particles of dirt and other things.
It’s useful to know this and keep it in mind because we can exploit it in various ways throughout our gardens.
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