Soft Water vs Untreated Water - HELP!

My outside faucets are untreated water, which is what I thought I should be using in my gardens and lawns because you do not want to put salt back into the beds or chemicals of any kind. (Yet I want to in my body? hmmmm) Anyways, I just added two nice newly painted arbours to my shade garden which requires a huge amount of water, aprox 6 hours twice a week. I have put up with the plants all having rust stains on them, and the mulch but darn, those white arbours are so pretty. So my DH says he can put a soft water spicket out front for me to use for that garden. It is mostly Hosta ( aprox 100 or so) and a few ( aprox 20) Heuchera, an odd Brunnera and some Astible, Dicentra and Columbine, all under 2 Blue Spruce and 2 Maple trees. So are there any science oriented folks whom would know whether or not I would be harming if I watered with soft water? I need to water the entire area because I do not want the tree roots to adjust and find the areas I spot water if for instance I was to put a drip system for each plant or use soaker hoses. Ok....too much info I am sorry, but I really do need to know. Thanks so much in advance for any help!

We paid to bypass all of our outdoor spigots because when concentrations of hardness minerals are heavy, sodium salts replacing them can and frequently will do damage to plants.

I suppose you could purchase and haul distilled water home but that's going to get real old real fast.

I have an RO/DI machine hooked up to untreated water for carnivorous plants I grow that can not take excessive nutrients. An RO system can create a tremendous amount of waste water. The system can be tricky to set up particularly if you do not have sufficient water pressure and one must often bypass the DI phase and then there is the ongoing cost of filters. Although a reverse osmosis system would certainly work for you, I would not recommend it for hostas or to keep the rust stains off your arbors but am just mentioning it in the event somebody brings it up as an option. RO systems certainly have their place but probably too costly to maintain in the long run for your particular situation.

My husband bought me several rain barrels. I am so thrilled with the quality of water that I am teetering on the purchase of a 1000 gallon cistern. I haven't seen the need to go that route just yet as my rain barrels combined with my RO water seem to be meeting my needs.

Here are the exact rain barrels I have-
http://www.sprucecreekrainsaver.com/

Mine are the color on the left which is more of a gray rather than a moss green. Maybe you could water your plants that are trained up the arbor with rain water? Rain water has a very low ppm which is generally well under 100 around me and would not leave stains on those white arbors.

Equil, do you fill watering cans, or use soaker hoses or use a pump in them? Or some combo?

Well, to be quite honest with you... I have a highly scientific method of collection. I place a 15 gallon wash tub under the spigots to the rain barrels and open them up and transfer that water by buckets to 34 gallon seamless Rubbermaid Roughneck garbage cans. When I have about 5 of those Roughnecks fully filled, I turn off the spigot and let the rain barrels fill. If it's a really warm day and it starts down pouring, I will stand out in the rain and bottle it right then and there by lining up 1 gallon jugs and doing it assembly line style one rain barrel at a time. I don't mind the rain. It smells so crisp and clean when it is raining. I generally water right from the Roughneck garbage cans. I sink a watering can in and they go glug glug glug as air is replaced by water and then I go do my thing. The rain water I bottle is brought in the house and stored. At any given point in time; I have about 200 gallons bottled, another 2-300 in the Rubbermaids, another 50? per rain barrel, and a stash of another 15 gallons in the wash tubs under the spigots to each rain barrel.

I could run a soaker hose from the rain barrels because there is a spigot on each one of the rain barrels but I'm not using that water for my lawn. I'm using it for plants inside my home as well as plants in other grow areas.

The RO system is more of a back up for droughty spells. Some carnivorous plants and tropical orchids simply don't like any impurities so shouldn't be watered with tap water for any extended periods of time or I'd have to flush out every pot. Distilled water and RO water with the DI phase are comparable at about 1-2 microS/cm while RO water without the DI phase and nice clean rain water are comparable at about 12-30 microS/cm. This difference is negligible so if you can harvest rain water reliably, why go for RO or distilled water at all?

The big deal for me would be my carnivorous plants. Tap water will do them in over extended periods of time. Sorry but I'm going to cheat a little bit and cut and paste from another post- "Among all ions present in the tap water, Ca2+, Mg2+, SO4(2-), and HCO3- are the most dangerous for CPs, as they precipitate as CaSO4 or MgSO4 on the topsoil or plants as incrustations or increase the peat pH value. Thus, the concentration of all these four ions should be at minimum since in a soil with a high concentration of these ions, the normal mineral nutrition (e.g. K+ uptake) is disturbed." That being said, hostas are not carnivorous plants that evolved in a nutrient deficient environment. They don't need that type of water and my hostas are watered with water straight from the tap... now mind you, I don't have any expensive white arbors. My arbors are black.

Rain water is a great way to water many plants. Plants are generally ecologically adapted to being washed by soft rainwater and the same holds true for their topsoils. Rain water is free after the initial investment of rain barrels and you certainly don't have to buy the type my husband bought for me because many people successfully collect rain water using many types of recepticles. I have a friend who gets 75 gallon bright blue barrels from a Chinese Restaurant. She saws off the top and runs the down-spout right into her rain barrel. I have no idea what the Chinese restaurant gets in those Rubbermaid type barrels but it's obviously for human consumption of some sort so once she cleans it out, it's good to go. I have seen other people use 175 and 300 gallon Rubbermaid stock tanks. There are other brands that are considerably less expensive and AgriMaster comes to mind as being about half the price. We buy AgriMaster from Blain's Farm and Fleet.

Oh gosh, one last thing. You need to add mosquito dunks (Bt is target specific and will not harm plants or any other life forms other than skeeters) to any open rain barrels or you will turn into a bat smorgasbord.

Well, I grew up with rain barrels that we used to water our gardens. I also live on a water resevoir front, did I mention that? Well I could sink in a pump and water from there, the problem is that the water levels fluctuate and it would not be feasible in times of drought.

Tonight I am playing with moving the sprinkler around and around and using the oscillating sprinkler instead. I am managing to not overspray the ($30 at end of season) arbours so far, but it is a pain in the butt. I wanted simple and am not going to get it! Perhaps I should have painted them a rust colour?

I have to water this particular area even when it rains because it is so dry and so crowded with trees and plants, but it is very lovely.

I like the scientific stuff you wrote about but you lost me somewhere around Ca2+, Mg2+, SO4(2-), I am just a simple farm girl who is passionate about her garden beds.

What do you think of soaker hoses? Do they water deep enough and thouroughly enough for and entire area?

I get about 100psi from my well pump and my pressure tank is set at 45-65. I know this because it broke last week and I had a new one installed and the guy set it at that because he saw all my garden beds and suggested I do that for better pressure. So I told him GOOD PLAN. And it is wonderful for my shower too!

Equilibrium: Nice rain barrell. I liked it and may add one for my lower patio plants. It is down hill from most areas and I have one area I think it will be perfect for. But not so much for the shade gardens. They are uphill from the house and water. And no way am I walking back and forth to water all that area, it is probably 1/4 acre in size. All has to be watered at least twice a week for several hours to stay good. So it is a big dilema. I may bite the bullet and put in an underground sprinkler system. But not this year.

Yes, drought has become an issue for us Midwesterners lately. That's exactly why I've been teetering on purchasing a cistern. We had one cistern on the farm where I grew up. It's long blown over but it wasn't all that dissimilar to the one on Petticoat Junction only a lot smaller (you couldn't lounge around in ours on hot summer days like the people on the show did). It served us well though. My bet is that it was around 2,000 gallons but I could be off.

If your tank is set at 45-65, you'd have problems with an RO system which should idealistically be at 70 or above based on my personal experiences. I'd really ditch the idea of an RO system.

Sorry about that but I posted then re-read your first post about wanting science oriented folks and felt bad about not getting more technical so I added on for you after responding to Victor. I would leave the water untreated because I think you are asking for problems with your plants for pretty much the reasons you suspected above. The arbor, regardless of whether it cost $30 or not, is an attractive element in most gardens and I don't particularly think I would want a white arbor turning an orangy-rust color and rain water wouldn't leave stains on a white arbor. I like the contrast of white against vegetation and would have gone for white myself but the shutters on my house are black and I figured that matched better but what do I know because I have absolutely no design sense what so ever unless I copy what somebody else has done and I keep seeing white shutters and white arbors out there in pics so I went with the black arbor for myself.

I'd go with a soaker hose under that Maple tree and forgo an underground sprinkler system so you can just move it around as needed. The hostas will mature and you won't even be able to see a soaker hose in a year or two. Hostas don't have a real deep root system like many native plants that can go down 10' or deeper to be able to withstand drought once established so I'm thinking you are going to want to move a watering system around a bit to hit all of your hostas which is another reason why I would lean toward a soaker hose.

The rain barrels I received were a gift. I would have never spent that kind of money (shhh, don't tell my husband) in favor of going with one of these only the brand I buy which is cheaper from Blain's Farm and Fleet (do you have any of those by you?)-
http://www.rubbermaidproducts.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Session_ID=01C1CB99FCEEDA520000064C00000000&Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=rubbermaidproducts&Category_Code=Farm+Tough%99+Stock+Tanks&aid=ovr-stocktank&OVRAW=stock%20tanks&OVKEY=stock%20tank&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=1556151522&OVKWID=13341608022
The rain barrels are nice but... they have a reserve of water below the spigot and that means a 50 gallon rain barrel will only yield about 35 gallons. The open design of the stock tanks means you can sink a watering can in to water what ever you want and most of them come with an optional hole that your husband could add a spigot to so you'd be able to connect a hose to that to drag over to water the plants you trained to your arbor as well as to water plants downhill.

We have a store called Rural King nearby where I have bought many gardening items and they have stock tanks there. I do like the barrel you have because it looks nice. And I am all about the design of things. I am so not scientific at all and I don't really know why I said anything about science types. I just thought someone might know about if it was safe to water with soft water because I thought it was not. And reading what you said I guess you do!

I am amazed at the amount of work you go through to water everything, but I think that is admirable. We need to conserve these days and to be environmentally aware IMHO. But that still is a whole lotta work hauling all that water around in buckets. And I just imagine you out there in some storm dragging your buckets etc. around and have to smile at what the neighbours are thinking!

I like what victorgardener said about the pump idea. I wonder if I could find an inexpensive pump (non-electric or solar) of some sort to put into a barrell system and water with that. I noticed at McDonalds the other day that they have a hand pump in their garden. The employee was out there cranking it up to start it and he had soaker hoses attached to it for their gardens. I was all impressed with that. I obviously had too much time on my hands as I sat in the drive thru lane that day.....but they actually have very nice landscaping at this particular McD's.

Barrel(s), he bought more than one and I was sort of aghast because the base price was high enough without the shipping when they are only about 50 gallons a piece and I could have had a 300 gallon stock tank for well under $200 that was open so I could dip and run! I have very little design sense but am working on it while he's very concerned about "curb appeal" which would be why he bought the stylish rain barrels where I would have gone more for function. Aside from that, the AgriMaster stock tanks are black and they would match my shutters and my arbor ;)

We're on 5 acres here and all of us are on larger lots so you can't really see what's going on at somebody's house unless it's winter time when the trees have dropped their leaves and even then it's sort of difficult so the neighbors probably have never seen me collecting rain water. If I had nice big stock tanks instead of the rain barrels, I wouldn't be out there while it was raining transferring water to the Roughnecks! Truthfully, I don't mind but I might about 20 years from now... by then I'll probably break down and get a cistern. Forgot to mention that the Roughnecks are all lined up together next to the rain barrels so I'm certainly not exerting myself. I do have girlfriends who also garden who have been over here when it started downpouring and I've told them that "duty calls" and have gone out to do my thing. They've come out with me and gotten drenched and we've had a few good laughs over how I collect rain water. They're now doing the same thing at their homes but they're using stock tanks with mosquito dunks added.

It's really not all that time consuming to water everything that needs rain water around here. You'd be surprised how fast it goes when you can dip and run. I normally sink two watering cans down at the same time to water several hundred potted plants. I swear it goes fast and I can get them all done in well under a half hour. Most of my other plants are all native plants so it's sink or swim for them after the first year or so when they have established root systems going down down down for water. I water them with tap water from the spigots while they are establishing and then I really do leave them be. The only plants I water are the carnivorous plants, the house plants, plants I've just stuck in the ground, and my hydrangeas. That's it.

And yes, water shortages are increasingly going to become an even greater issue so I do believe we need to conserve.

I now have five rainbarrels -- four from the same place (site below) and one that I'm not too keen on from another online place. My barrels are black so they blend in with the background and I have two linked together. They're 55 gals. and the company ships them free. I paid $99 bucks. We just had a heavy rain and the barrels are full and overflowing. The site is: www.rainbarrelsandmore.com

I especiallly like the tops which screw off. The lid has holes cut into it for the rain -- I have them underneath the gutter downspouts. The underside of the lid has a fine wire mesh glued (silicone to the lid) so no debris or insects can get in. It's incredible the amount of rainwater that comes off the average roof and just gushes out of your downspouts and gets wasted.

Just got back from an Amish lady friend of mine's home, she is an avid gardener and she showed me her rain barrell. Her husband made it out of a plastic barrell someone gave him, he put a spicket on the bottom and made a wood platform for it to sit on. It is white and so is their home. Then he put an overflow on the top which drains off to his old downspout system. Very cool. She waters all her baskets with it as she says it is better for her baskets. She is in the garden walk here on Saturday and the whole family was out weeding and fixin it all up. It will be so awesome for everyone to see the forthright way in which they garden. Very practical, neat, tidy, effiecent. She is such a great inspiration to live more organically and naturally.
We had a fun night when a neighbours 4H pig was seen wandering the corn field behind her house. Everyone was out to catch it and we managed to get it into their barn. I used my cell phone to call up to the ball field and let the neighbour know. It was fun for the little ones too!

orchid923, just went to that link, great products at reasonable prices! The plastic ones look just like what my Amish friends made. Except they are unpainted white. I am going to see if I can find one of those barrells and make one of my own. Now I am motivated from all you guys here! Thanks!!!

It really was so much fun, the poor pig was very tired, most likely had been out in the hot field without water for a while. One of the younger girls hosed it off and filled a trough with water for it.

Now they use an air pump for their well because of the restrictions on electricity that they live with. And conservation of energy is important. In her greenhouse she uses a solar powered window that opens automatically when it reaches a certain temp. And she has some sort of soil conatiner that conserves water for her hothouse tomatoes that she is growing year round. It has a reservoir that stores water that is used as needed.

btw, I have now taken 2 days to water that garden I posted about and I am not finished. It seems it is going to take me some time to sort out this sprinkler system.

2 days to water your garden and you are not finished? What on heavens earth have you planted?

well mostly Hosta, but it is the fact that these areas are large and very dry. The Maple trees can take up to 500 gallons per week each from the ground. (This info from the local county extension office) so that is what accounts for the time. Here is a picture of part of this area, I will try to get a better one. I posted this for the Hosta thread Big Daddy but it kinda shows one of the arbours.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh, I love that arbor and where you put it! The white shows up perfectly in that setting. I like white arbors better than black ones.

You've got way more plants to water than me. I feel for you particularly because Maples can be water hogs but those plants all look really nice where they are and are worth the time to water for the curb appeal alone.

Here is more of that garden:

....and more

...and more......see the sprinkler in this section? This can be any old water, I have just started this bed by cleaning out the debris and started to move things in.

Me thinks you better check into a sprinkler system! That's a lot of garden!

I just happened upon this and of course have my 2 cents to add. First of all, I had an underground sprinkling system install a couple of years ago and I wish that I had done it sooner. I am able to pump out of the lake that I live on, but prior to installing that system I was using my well water. I'm not a fan of water softeners but I do have a filter on the well water as it comes into the house. The filter was just added onto the pipe. Here is a link to one that looks something like mine. http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100087543&N=10000003+90401&marketID=401&locStoreNum=8125

Mine was purchased at Menard's and my dad installed it.

yes, I have seen those filters, I sure wish that would work here, but alas, it will not.

We have an Auto-Backwashing Manganese Greensand Iron Filter which uses potassium permanganate to backwash and filter prior to the water softener. Then it goes thru a water softener and then for drinking we have a Reverse Osmosis system. Unfortunatley we have very bad water here. It contains iron, sulphur, and many other things including some bacteria and stuff which is harmful to us. That is why we have such an extensive system. I personally did not think that the fancy ass filter really worked much better than just the softner did. But the science of it says differently. There is now a whole house system that apparantly does not use potassium permanganate but we have already invested a bunch of money in this system. Thankfully we use very little salts, maybe a bag every 2 months and potassium permanganate about once a year or so. The RO system is just 5 gallons so we use it to make ice and to cook. I also have a water distiller that we purchased in with this house and recently we hooked that up, it creates 5 gallons every 12 hours or so. It is very nice to use for certian things like my house plants as Equilibrium suggests. Some neighbours have to truck water in for potable use. Now that is even worse off than me. I guess I took British Columbia's water for granted the past 40 years prior to moving to the midwest, as did I take my zone 7 gardening for granted as well.

Our lake is really just a resevoiur and fluctuates too much for a sprinkler system. But a sprinkler system off the well?....hmmmm...I am dreaming of that day!!

Good Grief !!!!! I will never take my wonderful, good tasting, icy cold, very own well water for granted again. Why do you have such nasty water?

Just found this thread and thought I'd add in what I know from my own experience. In a previous home, we had a water softener. The softener didn't hook to the front spigot, but it did to the back. There's a bypass I could use, but I generally didn't because I was also doing laundry or I just plain forgot. We lived in that house for 21 yrs, 20 of them we had the water softener. I had a lot of plants, trees and shrubs out back. Nothing ever died or looked worse off than the plants in the front. I like the rain barrel method. I've been wanting to find some for this house. How does it work? I mean with your guttering? Do the gutters have to be cut off high for the rain barrels? I have no clue, forgive me if it's a silly question..... ;)

Hey, good question! The ones I have seen and the one I grew up with the downspouts are cut off and then go into the top of the barrell. At the top of the barrell there is a overflow that is then piped (a piece of house is attached to top of barrel so that if there is more watter it then flows out the hose) into the area that you previously had the water draining off. So you can also connect an additional barrell. Or as Equilibrium does you can drain into additional tubs by opening the spicket that is locateed at the bottom of your barrel which is how u get the water out! Some have a hand pump that is attached to the top of the barrell that you can pump up and then use like a siphon action thingy...so technical! but anyways they pump it up and use it that way. Go look at the links they provided above and u can see some ideas!


btw...coming from British Columbia to here was a water shocking experience. I also will never again question a good water well! I so took it for granted in the past. The water here really does suck before treatment!