If you have a green thumb, or at least TRY to have a green thumb, then the following information about water filtration products for gardening applications may benefit you.
First of all, determine if you have excess water hardness coming out of your garden hose using a test kit such as the WaterSafe Chlorine & Hardness Test Kit pictured on the left.
Problems with hard water used for gardening
Problem One: Excess water hardness will make it harder for fertilizers and other types of nutrients to dissolve into the water so they can get carried into plant root structures. Without vital nutrients your plants will grow neither as fast nor as well as they would with the nutrients.
Problem Two: Key components of hard water include calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate and as you may or may not know, you will find those same compounds in limestone. In other words, continually adding hard water to soil around plants more or less adds a bit of lime(stone) with each watering and over time the pH of the soil will rise.
This problem has a more pronounced effect on indoor plants which receive no fresh rainwater to dilute and/or wash away the calcium and magnesium carbonate deposits.
Problem Three: Hard water leaves deposits on fixtures and more importantly it over time it can leave enough deposits to clog spray nozzles, restrict the flow of water through irrigation piping and shorten the life expectancy of any pumping equipment.
Getting rid of hard water
Previously a person had to use salt-based water softening systems that swapped out calcium and magnesium molecules with salt molecules… which most plant-life really does not care for. Now, however, companies manufacture Salt-Free Water Softeners which use special filtration media which either absorb the calcium or convert it into a ‘harmless’ form which gets collected and backwashed out of the system at a later date.
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