"Kate Brown" wrote in message
...
Here we are in London and the ground is getting drier, actually the pots
are getting really dry. We have a mains water irrigation system, some
drippers, some sprayers, and use it if there has been no rain for a few
days. But I do notice that the leaves afterwards show how hard the water
is - the lime is left as a whitish bloom where the droplets evaporated.
Is this generally OK or should we try and counterbalance the lime with an
acid drench now and then? We don't irrigate the camellias which are in a
relatively shady area, but a potted azalea would suffer without the drips
when we were away. Otherwise we have all sorts of stuff - roses, lilies,
delphiniums blue and geraniums red - I'll put up some photos soon on
Flickr.

As a rule, though, is a lot of hard water bad or indifferent for most
plants?


Here in East Anglia if you use mains water, it's very, very hard water, so
the plants have to deal with it. So far, mine are thriving.