Tip: plants love rain water (lawns, growing plants, fertilizing, spring)
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Since I've been gardening, I've noticed that all types of plants love rain water as opposed to water from the tap. This goes for indoor potted plants as well. It's almost like they grow faster if I give them rain water I collected and they don't even need fertilizer. The sickly ones get healthy and rejuvenated with my "rain water therapy."
Since I've been gardening, I've noticed that all types of plants love rain water as opposed to water from the tap. This goes for indoor potted plants as well. It's almost like they grow faster if I give them rain water I collected and they don't even need fertilizer. The sickly ones get healthy and rejuvenated with my "rain water therapy."
It is amazing.
This is true, and a few years ago, I wanted to know why. I'm a K-State Master Gardener, and I put the question out to others in our group. One woman conducted an experiment in her own garden, collecting rain water and comparing it to tap water. It was the vast difference in their pH that stuck out in her findings. I can't remember what her umbers were, but the tap water at her house was around pH 9, and the rainwater here in NE Kansas (acidic) had a pH of about 4 or 5. That is HUGE.
The soils here are limestone based, which means they are naturally prone to being a bit alkaline. Since most plants prefer a neutral or slightly acidic soil (pH 6-7), she could only conclude that the rainwater helps to moderate the alkalinity of our soils.
It is important to note that the wrong soil pH makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, for plants to take up the nutrients that are in the soil, and no matter how much fertilizer you add, the soil's pH is effectively wiring the plant's jaws shut.
Results would vary from one part of the country to another, since soils differ, as does the acidity of the rain. But there is no denying the observations you have made. Rainwater really does lead to better plant growth.
This is good to know. It rains A LOT during spring and quite a bit in summer. I'll just put a jar on the balcony. I plan on growing plants this year but the tap water may hurt them since we got a new water source. It's even making people sick at the stomach.
Rainwater is high in fresh nitrogen which is one of the growing basics. Tap water is diluted and polluted with other elements that weakens the nitrogen and other nutrient essentials needed for healthy growth.
That's interesting. In Boise, many people have water rights, even in the city. They are able to water their lawns and gardens using canal water which comes from the rivers. I wonder how that would compare to rain water. I would think it would be good. The city drinking water is rather hard and heavily chlorinated.
In addition to Tina's point re: pH of rainwater being more acidic, rainwater also has NO SALTS!! So many plants have unhealthy levels of soil salts. The rainwater is useful in flushing out these salts.
If you have a reverse osmosis system (RO), you can almost obtain "rainwater quality" water from the RO. It strips all the salts out of the water (well, 95% of them) and the result is super pure, delicious tasting water.
As Wit-nit said, rain water is high in nitrogen, as the rain drops fall through the air, the take on molecules of nitrogen, so watering with rain water is almost like fertilizing. I did the experiment many years ago in grade school for a science project and found that seeds germinated quicker, the seedlings grew quicker and healthier and bloomed earlier.
Rainwater is also oxygenated as it falls from the sky (part of the reason it is acidic). Most gardens forget that roots need oxygen to release energy from the sugars created during photosynthesis. You can add hydrogen peroxide to tap water and get some of this benefit.
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I live in Texas and it's just not something we see often.
