Rain water

Rain water is great to use however the runoff water from your roof is not. Especially if you don't get rain often, gives more time for dirt and grime to build up. Next time place an arrangement of 5 gal buckets in the open rain, that water will be clean and good to use for plants.

I only have rain water stored in concrete tanks (no town water access). PH is insanely high (10.2 highest I've seen so far). Water I have tested straight from the sky is about 7.3 - 7.6. My tds-3 reads 28ppm so I have to use calmag or I get major cal/mg deficiencies pretty quick. Learned this the hard way winging it for this many years not knowing what my ph or ppm/ec was. lol

Point is, test what you're using first. Claims like rain water is hard/acidic, yadda yadda yadda are completely wrong. It depends mostly on your location. In my case, I'm in a sub-tropical rain forest with some pretty nice clean water (tastes bloody amazing and yes I drink liters of it daily). But as I found out the hard way, I need to supp the calmag or I am up shit creek pretty soon (exacerbated in hydro). Explains why all my grows at this location have been sub-par. Doh! Oh well, live and learn.

That was my point in bumping up this thread. Why is rain 6.8 out of the sky here, but up to 7.9 out of the plastic collection barrels?

My rain water I collect off roof in a barrel ph is around 7 varies very little and ppm is like 13 on a high day as low as 3. I test it every time before I put it in. This is rain from north east part of USA. My well water is over 700ppm so I just use the rain water

tangerinegreen555 said:

That was my point in bumping up this thread. Why is rain 6.8 out of the sky here, but up to 7.9 out of the plastic collection barrels?

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Is the grit problem constant? I know that stuff should rinse off after the first decent rain you have. After that it should stop. Hail can also chip away at it too so you might see some after a heavy storm. You have a bit of a problem though if it's constantly gritting.

You'd probably have to get the grit lab tested to find out what's in it exactly. I know they use some sort of UV protection on those things, and fungicide for moss on some of the newer stuff - so it could be nasty.

Try test the water next time it rains right before it reaches the barrel, after it has traveled down the drainage. If the ph is the same as the bucket you know the ph is rising in the barrel. Otherwise it's affected somewhere between hitting your roof down its path to the storage barrel.

I watered two spiders and a big fly into my plant today. I think it was ok. What was the question?

PH would depend on where you live and that would dictate wether or not you would be wise to use it. If you lived 5 miles down wind of a coal fired power plant or a smelter then probably not lol. Seen any pics if Sudbury, Ontario lol. Image from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_E4fM2Mrw52Q/TMsuzzIuW1I/AAAAAAAAATQ/37VAJfWLrPs/s1600/sudbury+rocks-1.jpg.

think of all the wasted chaga in that dead birch forest.... anyway more into the threads question, ive never used rain water for indoor but I have used melted snow for a few plants all through their life once. I didnt really run into problems that dont normally happen to me.

Budley Doright said:

PH would depend on where you live and that would dictate wether or not you would be wise to use it. If you lived 5 miles down wind of a coal fired power plant or a smelter then probably not lol.

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Lol. Yeah, you'd be dead...