Rain water for indoor plants

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Bigjoemeat

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has anyone ever watered there indoor plants with rain water?..i swear our outdoor vegetable garden has tripled in size over night from the rain water., and it doesn't rain much in southern Cali. Better than any other water? Lets discuss!
 
I've done it. As long as you don't live downwind from a nuclear power plant or anything like that. Just check the pH of the water before you put it on the plants.
 
Yes, it worked well for a while, but I got a bad case of mag.def. After a dose of Epsom salts sorted out that problem, I use 50% tap/rain water, but use the rain water to dilute my nutes.
 
Yes, it worked well for a while, but I got a bad case of mag.def. After a dose of Epsom salts sorted out that problem, I use 50% tap/rain water, but use the rain water to dilute my nutes.:thumb:
 
I have been growing in rain water for almost 18 months now. I will collect all I can and keep it in gallon jugs or buckets.

To my way of thinking, the beauty of rain water is that it already contains nitrogen. If the rainfall is part of a thunderstorm there is more nitrogen in the water. More info on this naturally occurring nitrogen in the water can be found by doing a search using the two words: lightning nitrogen. The links that will show up call it nitrogen fixation.

Not sure about this next part. Since the rain water contains dust then the dust can be very, very small particles of other minerals. Particles so small that they almost float in the air, just like particles of smoke float until they fall back to the ground days or weeks later or get caught by raindrops.

During the winter I load buckets with snow and let it melt and then pour it into the gallon jugs. If, during the summer, we get a dry spell, I will start to use the water from the aquarium when I do a partial water change. Normally I use the aquarium water for the house plants. If all that runs out I will put the city water from the tap into buckets and let it sit for a day or two.

Right now it is about 45 minutes after sunrise and as dark as an hour before first light. Thunder outside, plus the radar, says I will be collecting several buckets later this morning.

Have a great day.
 
Wow interesting you learn something new every day- I’d never heard of that. I’ve been living in my spot for 25 years and used rainwater only, for 99% of everything. Except for drinking water now I usually haul it from a spring.
My EC meter hangs in a cistern and I’ve never seen any measurable amount of N in the water I use. But thunderstorms are almost unknown here.
 
@Weaselcracker, yep, it was something new for me when I first heard about it back in the very early 70s when the instructor brought it up in a landscaping maintenance class I was taking. It was mentioned that it is one of the reasons that lawns, gardens and shrubs perk up so fast after a thunderstorm. The plants get the Nitrogen through the leaves and the roots.

He made no mention of how much N there or if it was easily measureable. I figure that it is not nearly as much as we might add to the water before water feeding our plants.

Carry on and enjoy the day.
 
I was shocked to find out the PPM on rain barrel was less than 15. This beats my well water at nearly 600. Reverse osmosis filter did not reduce PPM at all. Going to have rain water be go to source when available. Any dangers? Will have to find out what mag.def is.
 
Hmmm. I guess pay attention to what the roofing material is, as some (with tar for example) could be a bit toxic. But the fact that yours is 15 ppm says it’s quite pure.
Also I wouldn’t expect the rainwater to be as sterile as town water if you’re running some sort of sterile DWC setup. But for most growers that doesn't matter.
 
Weaselcracker said:
Hmmm. I guess pay attention to what the roofing material is, as some (with tar for example) could be a bit toxic. But the fact that yours is 15 ppm says it’s quite pure.
Also I wouldn’t expect the rainwater to be as sterile as town water if you’re running some sort of sterile DWC setup. But for most growers that doesn't matter.
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The tar in regular roofing shingles is a good point. I would think that after a couple of months of sunshine and then rain showers and storms the loose solvents in the tar would be cleared off. I know that I can smell the tar from a new roofing job for a week or two after installation.

I just put a sloped roof over a set of shelves I built for holding gardening supplies like buckets of soil mix or anything I did not want to get wet. Used a couple of sheets of the corrugated (polycarbonate) roofing plastic that comes in clear or a few other colors. Used two sheets (26" X 8') green 'cause it was gardening stuff ;). With the bit of overlap the shelf roof is 4 foot by 8 foot and collects 10 to 15 gallons on a typical rain or thunderstorm. An all day heavy rain is 20 and up.
 
Yeah I’ve run my life on rainwater for the last 25 years or so- it being very rainy here. Most of my roofs are cedar shakes, more than 40 years old.
I figure there will always be a little contamination from whatever type of roof you use, but for gardening purposes it’s generally going to be negligible unless maybe we are talking new tar or asphalt.
 
I'm just working on my first grow and yesterday it rained like all get out. I collected a 50 gallon drum of rain water between yesterday and this morning. Got on here to see if others were using it for their happy plants. Glad I collected it now.
 
Personally I don’t attempt to keep things sterile. Barrels get dumped and cleaned of debris once a year or perhaps every two years at most. Yes no doubt there’s lots of algae and other life. I don’t find it bothers the plants,- though I am in a form of soil.

I do use a slime prevention enzyme in my cloning tray- called Z7, or Z9 as it’s known in Canada. Hydroguard is another similar product. You’d want something like this for growing in DWC or similar style. And it has eliminated root rot among my clone cuttings.
 
The only time I noticed issues in the last couple decades of growing with rainwater, were with cloning, and the time I tried growing hempy style. Both solved by the additive I mentioned. Both situations involve letting water sit in containers under the lights- so it’s hardly surprising to find that something slimy starts growing. Life surrounds us.

Most people have much better luck going with slime prevention cures like Z7 or brewing compost teas- rather than trying to defeat nature and create laboratory-clean conditions in the grow.
 
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