do u have to remove the run off water from tray or can plant sit ontop runoff??

I am growin in soil and i know it a bit or a weird question
but do u have to remove the water from overflow tray,or can pot sit on top of run off?
is it badd to leave the run off?
i ask because my plants are about to flower and i dont plan on lifting pots to remove run off water after every watering
i dont want to interupt the treliss
any suggestions or tips

Its not good.

A wet vac works well.

Remove it. I did this once. Lost 7 plants that were 6ft tall and two weeks from harvest to pythium. Please please please don't make that mistake.

As a rule NO!
Sometimes rules need to be bent!
I am seeing a problem with some people and the use of "Smart Pots" doing a large watering and then not watering for 3-4 days and having trouble with moisture stress (cupping/curling).
The problem is that when you water like that. The water can simply run off the root ball like it's an umbrella (it's called the umbrella effect) and not get the required amounts of water to the base or underside of the root ball.
For that reason I suggest to allow the plant to "sit" in the catch tray for several minutes after watering so the "under side" of the root ball soaks up enough to remain "moist" till the next watering. You DO NOT leave the excess liquid in the catch tray after those "FEW" minutes! The wet vack is now in play!

IF you don't HAVE this problem. Get the run trough out, NO leaving it in the catch tray.

The next suggestion is to simply figure out how much to water everyday at lights on to carry the plant for 24 hrs! After all, this way your getting 02 to the roots everyday! That's a GOOD thing.

Do NOT, as everyone has said let your plants sit in the run off. One major point is that if you have built up salts in your containers they would be sitting in that excessive salted water. One of the points of watering to run off is to remove any built up salts and extra nutrients. You can put your trays on blocks, a table, whatever, drill a drain hole in it and put a bucket under it for easy disposal of run off. My plants are in trays that have a 2 inch plastic grid on them that runoff collects in. Then I just move my plants and poor off the runoff. I know that's not practical in your case so some sort of drain system or a shop vac is a must.

Sent from Northern Colorado.

The way I've always avoided the "umbrella" effect is to water in stages. I grow in 3 gal buckets. They get a gallon of pure water first and I let them sit 20 to 30 minutes before I water with nutes. That let's the pots get saturated, then I avoid dead dry spots in the soil. This 2 part watering works wonders to prevent that.

Sent from Northern Colorado.

While it's better not to, i used to water till just say a centimeter of runoff, and given the pott footprint, that's not actually that much volume. The plants would drink it up within an hour or so. didn't cause me any problems. But when growing, always best to reduce potential issues if it's possible, for me, it would have been very tedious to do that every 2 days.

How about ya don't use salty nutes to start with? I'll give you a hint here. If the manufacturer says to do a lot of run through. The nutrient is most likely Urea based and too salty!!
At the overall scale I'm working on. I sure don't have the time to do it the way you do. But that's not a bad way to control that!

I agree with Tippy on this one!


Also,
I've tried Fabric pots,,,,I don't care for them. They dry out to fast AND make the umbrella effect more pronounced! Regular plastic pots get the umbrella effect also,,,,but if you use the right size and water the correct amount, less so.

I like the Plant Warrior pots....no problems.

And I say that watering everyday (a metered amount) is still the best solution.