I wanted to share some results on this experiment. Bottom line: a small hole in a water bottle placed into a tray that holds water works great for a vacation care taker, even for seedlings of peppers, onions, broccoli, kale, lettuce and herbs.
Below are pictures taken the day before we left for a 6 day vacation and then pictures from when we returned. The soil in all containers was very moist and plants very happy.
For more long-term my trial lettuce, peppers, and broccoli results were interesting. The broccoli and lettuce were in small 6-cell seed starting plastic inserts. Both did well for a couple of weeks in a tray of water constantly being replenished with water from the bottle. After maybe 3 weeks the broccoli grew unhappy with its wet feet. The lettuce did well up through the duration of the experiment ~5 weeks. The peppers are growing in larger containers, 4 inch squares and continue to do well, just as well as their neighbors who are watered once every ~5 days. So even though I would expect peppers to grow unhappy with the wet feet, the taller containers are likely resulting in much of the root zone not being too wet. I'll continue to update the pepper results.
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