The quickest way to answer your question is to find a bonsai nursery in your
area and do what they do. The water in the Orange County, CA area where I
live is fairly hard (pH between 7 and 8), but I haven't had any signs of
trouble with my plants using tap water. The folks at Upland Nursery in
Orange CA and at Fuji Bonsai Nursery in Sylmar CA use tap water for their
plants. Both of these places are chock full of specimen quality bonsai as
well as tons of pre-bonsai stuff.

Your water company should provide you with a chemical analysis of your tap
water each year. It will have the pH info as well as a lot of other
interesting stuff about what's in your water supply.

You can test your own water with litmus paper strips, the type used by the
overly health-conscious for saliva testing. It's accurate enough for bonsai
work. Check any nutrition center for the strips.

BTW, don't use water from a water softener unit. These systems usually
contain rock salt.

Reverse osmosis water is OK, but RO is a pretty inefficient process (4 to 5
gallons down the drain for each gallon of RO water). Paying $500-1000 for an
RO unit just to make your bonsai plants happy is a pretty large investment.

Later








"adam roler" wrote in message
o.com...
to all,
i have no way of capturing enough rainwater for my
trees, so besides rainwater, what is best to use? in
recent times i have just been using water through a PUR
faucet filter, but the darn things keep breaking and i have
decided not to replace it this time.

adam roler
indianapolis indiana

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need." -Derek Webb


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