"Soft" water watering

[Richard Butt]

I have been watering my orchids with water from a spring near my home. I use this water because all the water in my home is "softened" water. I was told not to use softened water to water orchids when I began growing orchids. In the book Orchid Specialists, Squire says to water orchids with "soft" water. In other places he says to use "rain" water. Is Squire calling rain water "soft" water? Also, I will shortly need to rinse my plants as I am seeing a build up of salts beginning to form on the outside of my plastic pots. Can I use the softened water from my tap for the rinsing?? Otherwise will submerging plants for a few minutes in rain water be suitable for a rinse??

[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

I would say that one very good flushing under a running faucet for a while to get the salts out is ok, if followed by a rinse of good water. You may want to consider changing the salt you use in your softener tank to Potassium Chloride instead of Sodium Chloride. Potassium salt will not hurt your orchids unless you are growing some of the most sensitive orchids for water quality. Catts, Phals, Dens, Cyms, Oncidiums are fine with Potassium softened water, just flush often. You can still get salt build up from any mineral rich water.

Soft water can be water with low minerals, and I am sure this is what your author meant, or it can be synthetically softened. The minerals added to water by a softener are soft because they dissolve away easily. This means that when you flush the potassium out, it will flush out very easily, as opposed to calcium build up which is hard to flush out.

[prisana]

I have soft water in my home also, I didn't know what's been killing my plants until all of them died (house plants). My first few orchids did not like it either and a bunch of roots were burned--took me a while to find out why. That's part of the reason why I grow all my orhcids outside now--saves me time in having to move all the pots outside to water since it's the only water souce I have that's not run through the water softener. I didn't know there's an alternative in using potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride , though...I'll have to try it out.