Rain or tap water for garden

[sprintcyclist]

Am looking for an experiment that indicates if one is better than the other.
Can;t find one immediately, will post what I see.

,............... Chlorine kills some of the microbes in your soil. Making worm tea with chlorinated water defeats the purpose of worm tea. Colorado's state extension service tells us chlorinated drinking water may kill a number of microorganisms in soil or a compost pile. However, their reproduction rate is so rapid that populations rebound in a short time. In one study, researchers continuously applied highly chlorinated water to soil for 126 days. Two days after they stopped, the soil microorganism populations reached pre-treatment levels at all depths of soil. ..............

https://www.jainsusa.com/blog/chlorine- ... arm-plants

So for those 126 days, how did the plants grow ?

[sprintcyclist]

............Note that many water suppliers claim that chloramine is safe for plants. This may be the case for some plants, but it is not for African Violets. By combining chlorine with ammonia, the chlorine element is stabilized. This exposes African Violets to more chlorine than they might otherwise be, thus increasing the likelihood that your African Violets will begin to exhibit those symptoms for which chlorine is known.

Distinguishing Symptoms

The only way to know with certainty whether your water contains chloramine is to contact your water supplier. Alternatively, you can have the water tested, although this will normally incur some cost.

Other Symptoms

Leaves wilt. They may appear translucent brown with a soft, jelly-like consistency.
Leaves darken on the edge. Edges appear brown in color (necrosis).
Not flowering.
Treatment

The simplest way to treat African Violets, which have been exposed to chloramine, is to simply begin using an alternative source of water. If this is not possible, there are two ways which may help eliminate or, at least, significantly reduce the amount of the chlorine element...............

https://www.optimara.com/doctoroptimara ... amine.html

[sprintcyclist]

..............While this is essential for keeping the water supply safe and healthy for us to drink it isn’t so safe for our vegetables.

Chlorine and chloramine are thought to be harmful to beneficial microbes living in the soil and fluoride really doesn’t help our plants much either.

Chloramine, which is chlorine and ammonia mixed together, is said to kill yeast when trying to bake bread using water with it. The water must be filtered in order for the bread to rise correctly...........

https://www.veggiegardener.com/watering ... ity-water/

[sprintcyclist]

.............Results:
The rainwater and bottled spring water are great at helping plants grow, but the sugar water and salt water actually hurt growing plants. Tap water and distilled water may not hurt the plants, but you'll notice they don't grow as tall and proud as the plants that were fed rain and spring water.............

https://www.education.com/science-fair/ ... or-plants/

[sprintcyclist]

...............Rainwater collection is not just about saving water but about storing up a reserve of high-quality water for irrigation as well.

There are several reasons rainwater is more suitable for plants than tap water, but the most important is chemistry. In tap water, chlorine is a necessary disinfectant and fluoride is added to prevent cavities (as long as you drink one glass a day).

Nearly all plants, however, are susceptible to chlorine toxicity, usually expressed in burnt leaf margins. Indoor plants such as Dracaenas and spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum), pines, yuccas, and fruit trees, in particular, are subject to fluoride toxicity as well, with symptoms ranging from burnt, discolored, or spotted leaves to stressed fruit that may become diseased.

Calcium and magnesium make tap water hard and damaging to pipes, which is sometimes remedied by the addition of sodium as a water softener. But none of these mineral elements – which are much less concentrated in rainwater – do plants much good when delivered through a sprinkler system. The white sediment you see on the leaves of your plants is calcium and magnesium sediment from irrigation water, and sodium, like chlorine, is toxic to plant tissue.

Furthermore, sodium that reaches the ground is damaging to soil structure, too. In a productive garden, soil particles clump together in beneficial aggregates. Sodium, however, disperses these aggregates and creates cracks on the soil surface.

Plants look greener after it rains since air is 78 percent nitrogen and nitrogen, above all other elements, is what makes plants green. Some of this element, in its nitrate and ammonium forms, comes down in the rain and is immediately taken in by plants through roots and leaves.


Rainwater also contains more oxygen that tap water. You might think your plants are dangerously waterlogged as a result of excessive rain. Yet, whereas waterlogging may bring about anaerobic soil conditions and lead to root rot if you overwater your plants with tap water, the fact that rainwater is highly oxygenated may provide a margin of safety when soil is saturated after a downpour.

Carbon dioxide is also brought down to Earth to the benefit of plants when it rains. Carbon dioxide, when it combines with other minerals in the atmosphere, imparts to rainwater an acidic pH. When this acidic rainwater reaches the soil, it helps to release micronutrients such as zinc, manganese, copper and iron that are essential to plant growth but are mostly locked up in our local soil, which typically registers a neutral to alkaline pH. (Excessive pollutants in the air can produce so-called acid rain, which is harmful to plants, but is more of an issue in the Northeast than locally.)

Another benefit of rain is that it leaches salts down beyond the root zone. These salts, which are carried in irrigation water, accumulate throughout the soil profile and inhibit plant growth. When these salts are flushed through the soil after several years of accumulation, as is happening this winter, the effect is pronounced and the growth of plants is explosive.

Rain also distinguishes itself by the simple fact that it falls uniformly in the garden. This means that all of the soil is leached so that even the furthest reaches of a plant’s root zone will be bathed and cleansed of salt.

Peruvian lily (Photo by Lois Siskin)
Peruvian lily (Photo by Lois Siskin)
And, of course, rainwater will also wash off the mineral deposits, dust and pollutants that cover the leaves of all our plants, each and every one a survivor of the profoundly anti-horticultural urban environment that we call home.................

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/13/ ... deliver-9/

[sprintcyclist]

Plant growth: rain vs. tap water
December 4, 2015By Ana L.PM Group 12
My Scientific Question: What is the effect of acid water on plant growth

What I did: We planted grass seeds in 6 pots. We watered 3 pots with tap water and 3 pots with rain water and experiment which ones had grown and which hadn’t grown. And we measured the height of the plants.

What I learned: I learned that the rain water made the plants grow taller than the tap water. I think the acid was good for the plants because it made them grow.

https://sc.club.northwestern.edu/group- ... tap-water/

[sprintcyclist]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1r31P10abo[/youtube]

[Super Nova]

[Super Nova]

Sprint. When you paste in a youtube link, drop the "s" from HTTPS to HTTP then it works.

[freediver]

In most cases it's an economic decision sprint. I doubt there is enough chlorine in tap water to make a meaningful difference.

Even in the worst drought, while we are told to carry buckets of water round for the garden, we still send most of our rainwater into stormwater drains. People's instinctive reaction to this is to buy tanks, but that is far more expensive than tap water. The ground will store a lot of rain water for you.