Proper watering

[Joel143]

O.K. guys need yalls advise here. I had to leave for a month due to work so I left my mother incharge of watering my sarrs. I have three 100gal cattle troughs full. I always use distill or rain water. Well, my mother must of forgot. She watered them good twice...filling up the troughs completely...according to her. I don't know the contents of my towns water...could this really damage my sarrs? When I heard this I took what rain water I had from my rain barrel and equally flushed them unplugging the drain hole.

Any thoughts?

 

[Steve Booth]

Hi Joel

I have, through necessity in the past watered my outdoor plants for a couple of months with water from a pond, relatively high in nutriens. They came through OK but showed signs of damage, i.e. twisted and distorted foliage and it set some of them back very badly and one never recovered.

Having said that as you know it will depend on what water hardnesss etc it was as to how much if any damage is caused. If you can top water with rain, RO or distilled water and let that run through as a flushing agent and discard the run off, do this as often as possible. This will limit the damage and improve matters until such time as you can repot them in new media. The down side is that the media will get less acidic and so will cause the plants to be less prolific, hence the need to repot next spring, or even now if the plants arent in growth (sorry dont know what temps Louisana has this time of year).

Hope all goes OK
Cheers
Steve

 

[scottychaos]

Joel,
I wouldnt worry about it..a *one time* watering with tap water isnt a huge deal..
(well, in your case a month of tap water is a bit long, but still, probably not a big deal)

the problem comes when people use tap water for an entire season! or for several years..because the water evaporates away, leaving behind the minerals, and over several weeks/months/years the mineral levels build up and up eventually causing harm...but what minerals were in the water, in your case, you mostly already flushed out..I doubt you will see any harm come from this one episode..
flush it a few more times if you can, and your plants should be fine..

If you get some good rain storms, remove the plugs and let the rain wash them out for you!

Scot

 

[JB_OrchidGuy]

AND it also depends on your water. I water exclusively with tap water.....everything.....and have for over 8 years....Last time I checked my water was 96ppm, and I just checked an my ppm read 87. everthing has been doing great and pulled through a few sickly neps too.

I am with Scot and a good flush never hurt anything. I credit flushing pots every water to the health of my plants.

Grab yourself an ez meter off fleabay. Got mine for arount 16 bucks or so. Then you won't have to worry. Anything less than 100 should be fine I have heard.