This spring I tried - as usual - to start the veggies indoors. Not as
usual, I had little to no luck with the eggplants, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
Only the pole beans sprouted well. Some that sprouted soon died as though
from what looked like dampingoff...even though I had placed the containers
with soil in the microwave a good ten minutes to sterilize the mix. I never
had this problem in prior years. I just didn't know what was going on.

But then I noticed some volunteer tomato seedlings in the ground outside.
So when we had an unexpected rainstorm some weeks ago, I captured and kept
about three 5 gallon buckets of rain water. I used that on the
containers...now moved outdoors...and lo and behold - sprouts.

The conclusion is that the city water has something that the rain water does
not. The big difference is that the water company started fluorinating the
water last November. Could this have been the difference between last
year's success indoors and this year's failure? Anyone out there have
similar experiences?