Firstly, chlorine is not very stable in water at the levels recommended.
Apart from the volatility and UV induced breakdown it reacts rapidly with
many organic species (that's why it works!). It also reacts with some
nitrogenous species to form chloramines.

Secondly, if you get any book on tissue culture you will see that it is
regularly recommended to dip your cutting/bud material in chlorine solution
(much stronger than tap/pool levels). It kills surface pathogens before
culturing.

Thirdly, in times of high rain/organics load on the reticulated supply the
local authorities add more chlorine to cope with the loss due to reaction
with organic species. Watering your plants during normal or superchlorinated
periods appears to have no noticeable effect (or the whole gardening world
would be using rainwater (with all its pollutants!).

Lastly, the organic soup you mention will have such a high chlorine demand
that any residual traces of chlorine will be scrubbed in seconds.

The simple answer is that as long as you can swim in the pool without severe
irritation, your plants will "swim" happily also.

Go for it,
Jim.

"Tom Elliott" wrote in message
...
During winter, I was using my swimming pool as a storage tank - low
evaporation and enough rainfall to keep it topped up. I wasn't using
any chlorine in it (I'm in Melbourne, it's way too cold to swim in
winter), so the water was fine for the garden.

Now I'm cleaning it in preparation for a long hot summer. When I
rinse the filter out, I'm left with a bucketful of yellow brown water,
which I guess is dust and other junk that has fallen into the pool.

Could there be anything harmful in this? I'm leaving the bucket in
the sun so the chlorine evaporates, so I guess it would be fine for
the garden. If anyone knows of a reason why this might not be true,
I'd be grateful to find out.


Happy Gardening!

--
Tom Elliott
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