Outdoor watering

[farley101]

Hey all,

I will be utilizing my rolling shade house this summer to give my plants some protection from the sun and whatever weather ma nature wants to throw at it.
Since it's outside, I am looking to change up my watering procedure. I'm thinking I want to use a wand sprayer to flood each pot and catch the runoff for my other garden plants. I have been soaking each plant but at some point I don't want to bring each plant back inside to do so. Would rather water in place or close.
Wondering what other peeps do, I get that my environment is different but for short term I can adapt to something that works better/easier. Currently not looking to automate or anything like that, maybe next year!

[Ray]

Garden hose and water breaker. Flood them into thinking Noah’s coming at each watering.

When applying fertilizers and the like, use a hose-end sprayer. I use an Ortho Dial-and-Spray.

[farley101]

Ha, thanks for advice Ray! I need to find out about the water quality here, the report on the city website is a little old and not very useful for this. We get our water from the Mississippi so I'm guessing it's pretty good but not sure what is added after.

[Ray]

The smart thing to do is get a sample and send it off the the J R Peters lab.

Our municipal water supply comes from wells. Quite pure and almost no alkalinity (plenty of sulfur, though). They add calcium, but there is almost no magnesium in it at all.

The online water quality report is more about safety than chemical analysis, so without the Peters analysis, I might never have know that.

[farley101]

I managed to get the last 3 months' water reports from the utility. While they sort of help, the numbers given are after treatment at the plant.

After they make the trek to my house it seems things change a little as far as what comes out the faucet. 9.2 pH and 212 TDS when I read about 7 (using strips but close for what I'm looking for) and 110 TDS.

I am ordering a kit and seeing what recommendations they have for my water. Would be great to use tap water but I'm also looking at one of the small RO units to try. I don't use too much yet, it takes a few weeks to go through the 12 gallons I get at the store but with all the new plants I've added recently I can see that increasing fast!

[Fairorchids]

I bring a lot of plants outside in the summer. And, most of them are in full sun (open field, no shade after initial hardening).

To minimize the time I have to spend holding the hose, I rig sprinklers with an electronic timer ($30-45 at Home Depot) on the water hose.

Cymbidiums, Laelia anceps (shallow clay pots) and Australian Dendrobiums (tiny clay pots) get a heavy watering (2 hours every other day).

Vandas get 10 minutes twice a day, 9:30 AM & 1:30 PM.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by farley101

After they make the trek to my house it seems things change a little as far as what comes out the faucet. 9.2 pH and 212 TDS when I read about 7 (using strips but close for what I'm looking for) and 110 TDS.

I can think of no reason the dissolved solids content would change between the water treatment plant and you. I suppose biofilm could result in a pH change, but most municipalities take measures to prevent that, and that seems an awfully large change for that, anyway.

I have very little faith in TDS meters for absolute values (read this), and pH strips lose their sensitivity over time, so I’d question your numbers over those given by the utility.