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I’m used to using distilled water but with a shortage I hope tap water is good enough for now. I intend to use distilled water when it becomes more available again.
Fill some containers with tap water, don't put a cover on it, and let it sit for 2-3 days before you water anything. Plants need minerals from un-distilled fresh water sources.
How do you think plants outdoors get Ca, Mg? Rain water is "distilled" water. They get these elements from the soil!
But if you keep pouring mineral-laden tap water on potted plants, which continuously evaporates, it will leave behind the mineral salts that will gradually build up in the soil in the pot, and kill the soil. This is exactly what happens in arid regions that depend on irrrigation; mineral salts gradually build up in the soil as the irrigation water evaporates, and the fertility of the soil degrades year by year.
Rain is the condensate created by evaporation coming off bodies of water.
Rain water consists of as many as 12 different minerals.
It falls into natural fresh water as in lakes and rivers, or reservoirs.
We use this fresh water for tap water after treating it with chlorine and fluoride.
Having lived in south Florida, there were days when the bottom of my pool was coated - with sand from the Sahara desert. Sandstorms loft the stuff into the air and some of it gets into the Westerlies (air currents) and then rain washes it out when the moisture from the Everglades creates a torrential downpour in its path.
Fill some containers with tap water, don't put a cover on it, and let it sit for 2-3 days before you water anything.
This. The residual chlorine in municipal tap water is one of the easiest things to get rid of. It is highly volatile and will dissipate all by itself in an open container overnight. The warmer the room, the faster it works. We're talking pretty small concentrations here folks. However, if your municipality uses chloramines to disinfect domestic water, the evaporation method won't work. Easy enough to find out which your city uses to treat your water. Call and ask.
Sure, if there's suspended particulate in the air rain can entrain it.
But rain water, by the nature of its formation, is pure water. No nutrients. Plants in nature get those nutrients from the soil, not from rain water.
And I can assure you that nowhere is calcium carbonate a constituent of rainwater.
Water vapour in the air absorbs nutrients or toxins that are in the air. Including calcium carbonate. There are lots of nutrients or toxins drifting around in the air even when it's not raining and humidity is nil.
That's how many species of bromeliads that live in trees as well as the hundreds of species of epiphytic orchids that anchor themselves onto trees get all their nutrients. Their roots absorb the nutrients and nutrient rich water vapour directly out of the air. The roots aren't parasitic and they don't damage anything in soil, bark or foliage, they just take nutrients and/or toxins and nutrient rich moisture from the air.
Sure, if there's suspended particulate in the air rain can entrain it.
But rain water, by the nature of its formation, is pure water. No nutrients. Plants in nature get those nutrients from the soil, not from rain water.
And I can assure you that nowhere is calcium carbonate a constituent of rainwater.
I use distilled water that I make myself. Because it is distilled in a closed container, it is more pure than rainwater. However, even that water has to have a carbon post filtering to not have the taste of the cooked organics that are in the water. Many of us were taught in school by junior science teachers that distilled water is absolutely pure. It is not. It is closer to pure, yes, but not completely so. Please get that idea of pure water out of your head.
PURE water, being the universal solvent, can even etch the glass bottle it is stored in. De-ionized water is much less likely to do that. To get towards purity, in water and in alcoholic sprits, you will sometimes see labels touting "triple distilled." That isn't just advertising hype. The repeated distillation removes more impurities.
Rain weathers stone. It does so because of acids that form in it. When there is lightning in a storm, that lightning creates nitrates that mix with the water to form nitric acid. During the 1960s, the northeast in general was suffering from acid rain which was created by the steel mills in PA sending up plumes of sulfur rich pollution that created sulfuric acid in rain.
Calcium carbonate? Not so much now because of pollution restrictions, but a rock crusher at a limestone quarry that doesn't include water when crushing will spew a dust of lime that could mix with rain. There are worse things. I've been to areas in Canada where there was copper smelting. The rain that mixed with the pollution from those smelters killed plants for miles around. It was a crazy wasteland that forever made an impression on me.
Build within a couple miles of the ocean and the salt that gets carried up in rain not only affects which plants can survive, but it can corrode the aluminum fins on air conditioning units. Ask any HVAC repairman in south Florida.
It isn't just minerals and organics that get carried in rain and precipitation. Coming from Vermont, I don't get excited by snow. However, the neighbor's grandkids decided that they wanted to catch snowflakes in their mouths when they experienced their first snowstorm. Every one who did that got sick.
I will agree with you that most plants get trace minerals and nutrients needed from soil, but you only have to look at Spanish Moss and other aerophytes, such as orchids and bromeliads to know that some get all nutrients strictly from the air and rain.
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