Bottom-watering the most beneficial way to feed your plants

Promotes strong root growth, helps with pests

Watering plants is a no-brainer chore. Just fill a container with water, stroll over to your plants and pour water on the soil, right? Wrong! Turns out your greenery thrives better when you bottom-water them.

The process, also known as reverse watering, is just as easy but you need containers with drainage holes to do it. You simply put the pot in a bowl of water and let the soil and roots soak water from the bottom up for about 15 minutes — longer if the plant is larger. Think of it as plants preferring to sip water through a straw, rather than showering in it.

“(Bottom-watering) is great because some soils don’t absorb water as well if you don’t give them more time to get saturated,” Mark Grundy, a houseplant consultant and owner of Moss & Fern, told the website Food52. “It’s also great because the water doesn’t make it up to the top of the soil, and since fungus gnats like to lay their eggs in moist soil, they have nowhere to lay them, therefore preventing pests.”

There are other benefits. Bottom-watering can encourage strong root systems, since they’ll grow downward toward the source of water. Plus, it saturates all the soil as opposed to water sometimes running through only one area of the pot when you topwater. As for how frequently to water your plants, Food52 recommends weighing them, that way you can tell when the soil is dried out, since it’ll be much lighter.

There are a few things to keep in mind when bottom-watering, though. Leonard Perry, a horticulture professor at the University of Vermont, recommends switching things up every once in a while.

“Plants regularly watered from the bottom should occasionally be watered from the top to get rid of excess salts in the soil,” he writes on his website The Green Mountain Gardener. “(And) make sure plants don’t continually sit in water — just for a short time until some is absorbed by the soil.”

Lastly, don’t forget to use room-temperature water, possibly mixed with fertilizer.

GETTY IMAGES / ISTOCKPHOTO It is beneficial for plants to absorb water from the bottom.