So I gather that these minerals in rainwater are good for
trees, or the
lack of minerals in distilled water is bad?

Assuming the rainwater you get doesn't fall directly through the
Dow Chemical smokestack plume, the stuff rainwater picks up is
generally beneficial. Distilled water is simply wet. And
expensive.

I have been using distilled
water because my tapwater results in white deposits (calcium
carbonate, I think) on pots and trunks. I don't think they're
harmful, just
unappealing to look at. Any way to get rid of the calcium
carbonate in
tap water?

Not that's inexpensive enough to be worth it; water softeners
will do the job, but the chemicals used in the ones I know of
(and I'm probably way out of date now) are not good for the
trees. Intuition would seem to indicate that a small amount of
vinegar (or maybe Miracid) added to your water as you do your
trees should reduce the Ca deposits, but intuition is SO often
wrong . . . A toothbrush will take it off trunks. Pots are more
difficult.

I wonder if rainwater picks up anything nasty from shingles on
the roof?

Depends on what's hanging (or nesting) over your roof. ;-) If
you JUST shingled your roof, and if you used asphalt shingles,
I'd hold off collecting runoff for a few months.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden

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