Do you ever have Hmmmmm moments?
As I traipse between the basement and the main floor of the house to water my plants, I'm having one. I began to think of the water I'm using. We have four types of water that are accessible in our house: hard water, soft water, reverse osmosis water and water from the furnace. Over the years, I have used all but the reverse osmosis water for plants.
What do we know? Well we know that plants require various amounts of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium. That wasn't all that surprising was it. We also know that they need trace amounts of calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron and a few others. We know that excessive amounts of these and other minerals such as sodium, potassium, chlorine and fluorine are bad for plants.
We know too that really hard water contains lots of calcium and magnesium; that softening the water replaces some of the calcium and magnesium with sodium or potassium; that reverse osmosis water has some of these minerals removed; and that furnace water has sulfur which causes the water to be more acidic.
Knowing all this, what water then is best for our plants. We seem to know intuitively that rain water is best for outdoor plants. When we do a quick search of the literature, it is difficult to find someone who will say definitively which water is best but there are some additional things that we are told. Plants take up nutrients best when the water is room temperature and that the best pH is between 5.5 and 6.5.
So now what? I guess that given all of the above, the best water I have available to water the plants is the reverse osmosis water, that has been left to warm up a little, because that is effectively rain water. The next best is the hard water as I believe ours is not excessively hard. Many garden writers seem to agree with this approach. And finally, for plants that need slightly acidic water (azaleas), the furnace water might be OK.
Back to my traipsing
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Bruce
ReplyDeletewhat are you doing to get "reverse osmosis"?
Can you exlain what this is?
Many of the water outlets in the City provide reverse osmosis water. It is the cleansing system that they use. When we purchased a new water softener over a year ago, we also learned about reverse osmosis systems that remove most of the salts that softening systems add and many of the impurities left behind either by the City system or the softener. We purchased a reverse osmosis system that we use for drinking, washing fruits and vegetables, coffee, tea etc. You can get a system that ranges anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Ours cost about a thousand. You get what you pay for.
ReplyDeleteI am really impressed that you put together good and useful information on potassium softened water for plants
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