Watering potted plants from the bottom is an efficient method that allows plants to absorb water from the bottom up through capillary movement throughout the soil. This method is best for small- or medium-sized plants that can easily pick up on. Bottom watering plants involve soaking the lower part of a plant in water for a specific time, preventing soil disruption and reducing the risk of leaf spotting or disease.
To use bottom watering, place your pots in a container that can hold enough water to cover at least half of the pot, like a sink, bucket, or basin. Fill the container with water between halfway and three-quarters up the side of your pots and leave your plants in the water until the top of the soil becomes moist.
To bottom water plants, fill a sink or tub with room-temperature water (add fertilizer if needed) and let the pot soak up the water until the plant sits for 30 minutes. The best way to “bottom water” is to fully submerge the pot in a container of water and let stand until bubbles stop appearing. Then drain fully.
Bottom-watering, sometimes called reverse watering, is when you place a plant in a bowl of water, allowing the soil and roots to soak water from the bottom up. Find a container large enough to hold the planter and fill it halfway with distilled or filtered water. Tap water often has too much chlorine, so put your plants in a tub or sink and let them “soak”.
Add or pour water into the bottom of the container, sink, or bathtub, depending on the size of the pots you’re watering. For optimal results, it’s essential to follow proper watering techniques and avoid using tap water with too much chlorine.
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Thank you so much for this. I just started bottom watering my plants. I have so far used this method with my orchid, Hoya Hindu Rope, and Thanksgiving & Christmas Cactus. All are in 4″ pots. I find it takes an hour plus before I feel any moisture in the top layer of soil (especially in terracotta and/or with orchid bark). Is this normal?
My plants don’t take 10mints to soak up the water till the top soil becomes moist. It almost takes an hour to soak up water and till the top soil is moist. For me it doesn’t depend on the size of the pot. 2 inch-10inch pots are taking almost an hour to become top soil moist. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong. Where am I going wrong? Do I need to wait till the top soil become moist and then take them out of water or come what May I should pull them out of water after 10-15nints?? Please help
Thanks Claire, much appreciated 🙏 I have always top watered my indoor plants but this last winter all my indoor plants got infested with fungus gnats, I tried all the suggested recommendations for eradicating the fungus gnats that didn’t work for my indoor plants (peace lilies, golden bamboo, green dragon, heart leaf pythos & snake plant)….I opted to let them really dry out & didn’t water many of them for weeks, a few of the peace lilies where wilting / droopy and I opted to bottom water those to see if I noticed any difference – they perked up after a brief bottom water – the seasons are changing again & it’s going to start warming up (im in Perth Western Australia) so I’m going to go back to top watering to see how the fungus gnat shit’suation is & I’m feeling I may need to change the potting soil of my indoor plants coz I’m aware fungus gnats & their larvae can cause damage to different parts of the plants. Q: I’m curious what you have noticed with fungus gnat infestations on indoor plants & wether it’s worse in the autumn winter months versus spring summer months? 🪴🌱🌿🍃🍀🌻
Thanks Claire. Very helpful article. This question might sound obvious, but as a ‘newbie’ I’m still getting to grips with everything. I noticed in one of your ‘chatty’ articles that as you watered, you poured the run off water back into the watering can. 1. Does using water that has come through one plant’s pot, potentially harm a different type of plant? And 2. Are you re-introducing the chemicals you are ‘flushing’ out? Or from time to time do you flush through and not use the run off? Thanks again for your articles.
Most of the time, I top water in the sink, except for my African Violets – I will carefully top water a little bit and then I bottom water them. But, in the summer, when I fertilize, I don’t want to waste the water, so, especially for my thicker leaf plants like Hoya Compacta, I’ll top water them in a large rectangular container and then let them sit in the water for about a half hour to 45 minutes and let them bottom water, especially if they’re in terra-cotta pots. I hope that makes sense!! Thank you for sharing! 💜💚🪴
I believe shrub-plants, like calatheas adapt better to bottom-watering than top-watering. I have killed so many calathea in my care. Then I started watering from the bottom, and they are thriving. In the dense jungle, shrub-plants don’t get the direct rain, the larger trees works as a umbrella and the high humidity makes the top layer of the soil always moist
Thanks Claire! Every seed starting article has said to bottom water. My father had a big green house and he swore the best is to top water and use miracle grow. I know, the politics tick off some people too. After paying so much for plants I have started my own with grow lights. I think the cleansing is the secret.
Thanks for another great article. I mainly top water but have been putting my plants in a tray whilst watering then leaving them for an hour to soak up the run off. I’ve noticed the compact soil you mentioned and think I’ll stick to top watering. The tray thing has only been for a couple of months. I don’t water to a schedule, I do the finger thing and also lift the pot to see how light it is. I’m a bit worried about my Monsterra. I watered him 2 weeks ago and he’s still moist. He only gets top watered. I’ve been looking out for signs of root rot and he seems okay. I think I’ll change the potting medium next spring just to be safe. He’s huge so I avoid repotting unless necessary.
My opinion about bottom watering is that it’s not the plant absorbing the water but the soil. I’m not a scientist though, lol, but that would be my reason why the plant in your experiment didn’t grow as well. Anyway THANK YOU for this article, I just discovered your website a few weeks ago but am working my way through your articles and have loved them lol.
something negative i found out about letting my tapwater sit for 24h is that… i m now drinking the plantwater myself because it also tastes better to me. im mostly drinking water and simple tapwater myself and if i compare a glass of fresh tapwater to my plantwater … the plantwater tastes 10 times better. :S
Hi Claire I wanted to start bottom watering to reduce fungus gnats but not if my plants will suffer. They are all doing well but I thought if I bottom watered it will be dry near the top where they like to lay their eggs. For the longest time I have used neem oil in my watering to keep the gnats at bay but it is sooo expensive here in Australia, I just can’t afford it anymore. I also thought I might try Ant Rid to sit on the top of the soil. Apparently gnats hate it. Can you give me some advice? Deborah from Melbourne Australia.
About the root only soaks up what it needs through bottom watering is actually not proven to be true by some research. Instead of the root that soaks up what it needs, it’s the soil that soaks up what it can hold. So if we pot a plant with very little root system in a bigger pot, the water that is soaked would not be little but it would follow the amount of the soil in the pot. Still give it a chance of rotting. So it cannot be a reason why we should bottom water. To me personally bottom water advantages me because it does save some time because we can water some plants together all at once, dry top so fungus gnats and other bugs can be avoided, also helps the plant stem to stay dry while it receives humidity from the bottom ☺️
I can see why you asked people not to come at you because there’s a lot of inaccurate and just bad information in this article. You are clearly not an expert. Let me explain bottom watering to you since you don’t seem to understand it. First the reasons why you bottom water is if you plant has delicate foliage like an African Violet with delicate leaves they can’t get wet because it will leave brown spots where it kills the leaf cells, so they must be watered from the bottom. Two if your soil is compacted you need to bottom water one indication that it’s compacted is if the soil is very dry and pulled away from the pot it’s actually shrunk, it might be extremely lightweight difficult to push your finger into or when watered it runs off quickly. It often means that the soil has become hydrophobic. Bottom watering will ensure that the plants soil has not become so compacted that it’s hydrophobic meaning that it’s dried out to a point where it repels water. Top watering would be adequate as it would just run off. If you’re Watering your plant and it runs through quickly you’re not fully watering it but may not easily be able to tell. To help reduce gnats you don’t want to leave your topsoil wet. You can still get gnats with bottom watering but it’s significantly reduced and by putting a little diatomaceous earth in the bottom of your decorative pot when using a pot in pot situation you prevent the problem. It’s much easier to prevent than it is to get rid of them. In a separate pot that comes preferably 3/4 of the way up the pot, you submerge the pot into water allowing some room so it doesn’t overflow.