City Water

I used to totally avoid using city water on my garden, for years I used an old hand pump well to water it and to avoid all those nasty chemicals they put in the water. Last year though I ended up with a lot more yard to farm and no hand pump well, so I grudgingly resorted to using the hose and city water and prepared for the worst..

To my surprise even the stuff that was in covered mini tunnels and only getting city water did great. No letting it sit out, no worries about the PH, turn it on and water.

I know some people are cringing while they read this and I would have been one of those people before last year. Ideally I'll get a rain barrel system setup this year but if not I'll be using the city water straight out of the tap again.

I think a lot of things depend on what chemicals they actually put in the supply and the geomorphology of the your garden....

I have watered with city water. My biggest concern is chlorine and chloramines, which the latter are appearing more and more rather than chlorine, but I think nastier...
I wish I could collect more too, I could easily collect all I need for a total off the water grid system all year.

However, I don't seem to suffer too bad, and I try to load my soils with as much compost as it can handle, char and char-like bits and keep my soil covered 100% of the time with some kind of top layer....all these methods seem to work for me.....

again, geomorphology is going to play a part if you arent farming in pots.....my terrain is clay, but volcanic clay and when it gets water and organic matter to break up the 2:1 clays, it is black gold. This stuff could chelate radioactivity with a healthy microlife population. One reason that Hanford was used for siting purposes, the soil and rock are relatively inert towards radioactive elements, but at the time they didn't realize how porous the actual rock was and its association with the water supply, oops....I digress, as these soil types are rare except for a narrow band on the West Coast and so are those properties

Abiqua said:

I think a lot of things depend on what chemicals they actually put in the supply and the geomorphology of the your garden....

I have watered with city water. My biggest concern is chlorine and chloramines, which the latter are appearing more and more rather than chlorine, but I think nastier...
I wish I could collect more too, I could easily collect all I need for a total off the water grid system all year.

However, I don't seem to suffer too bad, and I try to load my soils with as much compost as it can handle, char and char-like bits and keep my soil covered 100% of the time with some kind of top layer....all these methods seem to work for me.....

again, geomorphology is going to play a part if you arent farming in pots.....my terrain is clay, but volcanic clay and when it gets water and organic matter to break up the 2:1 clays, it is black gold. This stuff could chelate radioactivity with a healthy microlife population. One reason that Hanford was used for siting purposes, the soil and rock are relatively inert towards radioactive elements, but at the time they didn't realize how porous the actual rock was and its association with the water supply, oops....I digress, as these soil types are rare except for a narrow band on the West Coast and so are those properties

Click to expand...

True man, I do still let it sit out for a day for my houseplants and then PH adjust it down from its 8.5 average. I have good farmland type topsoil too in most of the yard, there's a spot where there's a lot of clay though. I'll try adding more compost back there this year, I do have a lot of leaves piled up over it right now, thanks for the tip! If you live near Hanford you might be chelating radioactivity lol.