Potted Plants Dying From Water Here (Phoenix: house, buying, softener)

[yukon]

Does anyone know if there is any plant food that might offset the crappy water here? My plants are all potted (balcony) but using bottled water would get expensive really fast. Would filtering tap water thru a Britta or something similar work?

[Ponderosa]

Doubtful. A Britta would not remove dissolved solids or improve pH. Ion exchange water softeners make things worse because they replace Ca with sodium which is even harder on the plants. An undersink RO unit would do the trick and is a lot cheaper for the long run than buying water.

[pbenjamin]

Sounds to me like someone has a brown thumb and wants to blame the water supply. Phoenix water is just fine for plants, drinking, whatever.

[wase4711]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

Doubtful. A Britta would not remove dissolved solids or improve pH. Ion exchange water softeners make things worse because they replace Ca with sodium which is even harder on the plants. An undersink RO unit would do the trick and is a lot cheaper for the long run than buying water.

Agree; an RO system would be the ultimate, but uses 3-4 gallons of water for every gallon of RO water that gets outputted

The water is pretty poor out here; I put a whole house carbon filter on my house main in, and that has improved the quality of the indoor water greatly over the water softener that was here when we bought the house...

watering several of my newer plants with the untreated water has made their leaf tips pretty yellow, and, I hope it doesn't end up killing any of these expensive new plants..

[PhureeKeeper]

Only problem I've had with plants was due to either my neglect, or tried to overcompensate with kindness and over-watered them. Use Miracle-Gro every month or so.

[Colt AZ]

Most potted plants in Arizona, indoor or balcony, usually need very little care when it comes to water -- unless they're exposed to partial sunlight during the day. Then a splash or two more would help them.

I've been known to insert Miracle-Gro plant spikes as needed, whenever the plants look a bit sad and discolored.

[Colt AZ]

Hey, buddy! I'm dying over here! How about a little TLC once in a while?

[observer53]

Make sure that you give it enough water to flush through the pot. If you just pour a little water in each time, it can build up some salts. The Miracle Gro spikes are a good idea too, to keep them happy.

[wase4711]

whats the best way to wash the salts through on things planted in the ground? Just water the crap out of it, so they wash through? Can you use those miracle grow spikes on things like Madagascar palms, and Yucca Rostradas?

thanks

[LBTRS]

Are you sure you're not using water that is softened with a water softener? Our plants do fine with the tap water out of the one faucet that we don't have hooked to the water softener. You can't water plants with softened water as there is too much sodium.