Filtering Chlorine From Water for Healthy Gardens

From Grozine Edition ZERO

Filtering chlorine from water for healthy gardens is a fundamentally important, and thankfully easy and effective step you can take on your way to huge harvests this gardening season.

Why is it SO Important for the health of the garden to filter chlorine, a common addition to water supplies, from water intended for the garden?

“A healthy soil is made up of beneficial bacteria, molds, and various forms of fungi. These are the same organisms that chlorine put in your water hose is designed to kill!”

-Randy Lemmon, Gardenline

Next time your garden needs a drink or you go to fill your watering can-which many of us are looking forward to doing often this season-consider what it is exactly you are feeding not only your plants, but the soil life they are supported by. The very same soil life you are depending on keeping roots healthy and essential nutrients and mineral flowing into developing flowers, fruits, buds, shoots and roots.

If this is the first time you have considered that the tiny microscopic life forms that live in the soil and on plant parts including roots have a lot to do with how healthy your garden grows and how it will ultimately yield, there’s a lot of research that you can do. Basic forms of soil fungus like mychorhizae can make a big difference in your garden.

In just this one example out of thousands of different types of beneficial soil fungus or bacteria, this particular good-guy helps create bigger roots systems by actually acting as a living extension of the plants natural root growth. Plants in return, feed organic wastes through the roots to help nourish the beneficial fungus that is assisting the plant to take in more water and nutrients so that it may grow faster, and therefore provide more waste product for the mychorhizae to feed on and further cultivate their numbers. By definition, this beneficial relationship is Symbiotic (aka “natural and great!)

Benefical microbes like these ones are already living in healthy soils and may also occur in composts. Savvy growers know that by adding specific species at the right times, that they can protect their plants from common cropping stresses while improving a huge variety of functions including nutrient absorption, disease resistance and the ability to withstand droughts and soil salinity.

Growers may make a considerable monetary and time investment in doing so; all for the love of their garden and to see their crop produce the biggest yields of best quality possible.

Now, knowing this-do you also realize that the chlorine or chloramines added to your tap water are there for the purpose of killing things like bacteria and fungi?

What about other common contaminants that may be lurking in your water supply like heavy metals and similar sediments that can harm not only your garden, but the people who may consume what you grow; whether as food or medicine.

You can collect rain water, but depending on where you live, “acid rains” are well known to living things, for example like aquatic life. Furthermore, unless you just have a few pots to water it can be difficult if not near impossible to keep up with a thirsty garden with rain water only during peak demand-when your plants are capable of growing very big and fast.

But like most people, if you are watering your garden or even your lawn by turning the spigot you are opening up a valve to destruction for the healthy life that can flourish in your soil and in the plant’s root system. The very soil life that reduces or eliminates the needs for harmful pesticides and fungicides while reducing the demand for synthetic fertilizers. A lot of gardener may not even know what their soil is really capable of-because they have been slowly sterilizing it for years, increasing their dependence and reliance on potentially harmful synthetics.

When it comes to watering your lawn or garden, you typically need a high rate of flow and don’t want waste-so RO (Reverse Osmosis) filtration isn’t always practical or economical.

That’s why d-chlorinator and sediment filter combo units like the one pictured here can be part of healthy gardening solution. The “Big Boy” can effectively clean up to & GPM (gallons per minute) with common water pressure.