A visual example of what too much salt in your water does to your plants

[tru]

Hi, I thought it'd be a fun experiment to see what 2 plants look like side by side; one with water from my tap, one with water from RO filter. The results were pretty obvious soon into the experiment, but I let it run on to get a better idea of what it can do your plants

If you have issues similar to this, get an RO filter!

[kittycatus]

What is the TDS of your tap?

[tru]

I only have a pH reader unfortunately, but based on the salt accumulation on the leaves, probably pretty high lol

[K-Rimes]

I don't see that big of a difference? Also those pots are ginormous for such small plants.

It's not necessarily salt that's building up on leaves, could just be mineral content. Sure, RO is better, but I am not sold that it's the silver bullet. You can also leave your tap water out in a bucket overnight and the chlorine will evaporate and that'll help some.

[tru]

They're pretty cheap if you wanna try it yourself,  $40 filter that comes with everything to attach to a hose and says itll filter for 2 years

As for the plants, yeah they're in huge containers but I'm good at gauging my watering; they grow so much faster when their roots really have the area to spread out, I used to go from .5 gal to 3 gallon but I feel like I break up the rootball too often when transitioning from 3gal to 5gal so I just skip it lol

I don't know if the picture does it justice then but the second plant is just beaming with health compared to the other irl

[K-Rimes]

They're pretty cheap if you wanna try it yourself,  $40 filter that comes with everything to attach to a hose and says itll filter for 2 years

As for the plants, yeah they're in huge containers but I'm good at gauging my watering; they grow so much faster when their roots really have the area to spread out, I used to go from .5 gal to 3 gallon but I feel like I break up the rootball too often when transitioning from 3gal to 5gal so I just skip it lol

I don't know if the picture does it justice then but the second plant is just beaming with health compared to the other irl

Oh, the hose filters? They're actually too effective for calcium for me. My well water is SUPER LUDICROUSLY HARD, like, it blows chunks sometimes and I found that while certain plants performed moderately better with the filter, it stripped out calcium too effectively and I had to amend a lot of stuff like tomatoes to bring them back to health. I ended up taking it off.

For me, I only got about 6 months of use before it was severely slowing down the pressure, even with a steel mesh filter beforehand for the chunky bits.

[tru]

I guess the elephant in the room is how much water you use, every single plant I have fits in a 50 square foot area, largest pots I got are 5gal 💀