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I have some parsley seeds which I want to plant. First of all, I want to plant them indoors (in my house) then later when they are grown I want to put them in the garden, since many plants first need to grow indoors.
How can I keep them watered without having to water them by my own?
I am afraid that sometimes I forget to water them. Is there a solution, perhaps with clay or something which holds the water?
There are several ways to do this:
Water globes:
These are containers of water with a narrow opening that you fill and stick into the soil. Commercial ones can be very attractive, and advertise as keeping your plants watered "for weeks". I've never used them myself, but I have repeatedly heard that they are unlikely to keep your plant watered more than a single week, and require regular cleaning. They generally run from $9 to $20. You can also create your own with a bottle with a small hole; I suspect a large bottle with a pinprick hole may last longer, but I've never tried it.
Drip watering systems:
Some of them have tanks and some work from faucets; most have an adjustable drip. They are more likely to last more than a week. The ones that use faucets seem to primarily be designed for outdoor use, so may be useful once the plants are transitioned outdoors, and many of these are designed for multiple pots. There are also drip hoses, but they are not really designed for what you seem to be doing. A quick google search found systems that ranged from about $19 to $99.
A wick system:
This uses a wick (a thread, strip of fabric, yarn, shoelace, or something similar) to wick water from a separate container of water to the soil of the planter, either at the top or the bottom of the pot. There are a couple of commercial products according to Google, but this is generally a do-it-yourself method. You will need some time to be sure your plant is getting the correct amount of water, and make adjustments as needed (usually by changing to a thicker or thinner wick). As a do-it-yourself, this will generally not run more than a couple of dollars, and may be effectively free if you already have what you need. (One word of warning: if you have a wick at the bottom of the pot and you run out of water in the container, the wick will pull water out of the pot. Putting a wick at the bottom of the pot that isn't connected to water is actually a suggested method to keep pots from waterlogging or for plants that need very good drainage.)
The visual system:
This involves keeping the plant somewhere that is both close to water and somewhere you will see it frequently. Next to or behind the sink works well for me; I can see when the plant looks like it needs water, and I don't have to stop what I'm doing to get water for it. It does require a plant that can survive drying out to the point where the need for water is visible on a regular basis. A moisture detector of some sort can help with this whether it's an actual meter of some sort or a terra cotta 'worm' that changes color as the soil moisture changes. It's free, or the cost of whatever you use to track soil moisture, but your results may vary.
I LOVE answering gardening questions! Here's my idea. Use a styrofoam board as an insert (you will have to cut portions out accordingly) to place the seed starter cell pots on. Get it just right, and you can have the whole thing float like a raft in a pan of water! The styrofoam will keep the cell pots from sinking, but lie low enough that the roots can easily access the moisture they need. You can also buy trays like this, but it's more fun to make your own!
The LifeHack way is to use a filled plastic bottle with a small hole drilled in the bottle cap, put upside down in the soil. This way you only need to refill the water once every week or so, depending on the size of the bottle.
See Google for examples. Good luck!
I’ve done the bottle with a hole method. It clogs and doesn’t work well. If you don’t have a way for air to get back in the bottle empties until there is a little bit of a vacuum in the bottle and if you do have a way for the air to come in the water will generally run out more quickly than the plant needs it. Mostly the same is true for the water globes.
The three solutions that I have personally tried and know to work are a water faucet with some kind of timer on it. Typically they would run for a short period of time every few days. When you have very young plants (seeds) it would be a very short period of time multiple times a day then expanding to every couple days.
You would then attach that to a series of sprinklers and hoses or a drip irrigation system.
Another solution is “self watering containers” which work varyingly well depending on design. They aren’t really self-watering but allow you to water less often and not worry about whether you are watering too much or too little.
The ones from Walmart generally have too small a reservoir. The ones from Gardener’s Supply Company work well but are expensive. If you search for instructions on building “Earthboxes” or something like that you can make your own from plastic storage containers if you have a drill with a variety of attachments.
The final method I have used is Soil Moist crystals. They are clear and start at the size of a grain of sand and then swell to almost the size of peas when water is added. Then over time they release water into the dirt as the dirt dries out.
