If you have houseplants, you may want to water them with distilled water. The distillation process removes minerals and chemicals from water, leaving you with clean water that is better for your plants. While all plants benefit from the use of distilled water, it is especially important for indoor plants. You can purchase distilled water at the grocery store or make your own at home.
Why Distilled Water is Better than Tap Water
Tap water contains chemicals, such as chlorine, which are used to treat the public water supply. These chemicals can be harmful to plants, with the effects being more pronounced on houseplants than outdoor plants. This is because the chemicals build up in the soil and are not washed away by rain, as they would be with outdoor plants.
Chemicals aren’t the only issue with tap water. The hardness of the water can also impact your plants. If you have hard water, it’s a good idea to use distilled water for your houseplants. Some plants are particularly sensitive to the minerals found in hard water. While hard water is often a concern with well water, it can also be an issue with municipal water supplies.
If your water comes from a well, you may have a water softener system in your home. These systems are effective at removing hardness from well water, improving the performance of soaps and shampoos and reducing staining on appliances and sinks. However, softened water is not ideal for plants. Water softeners use salts, such as sodium or potassium, during the recycling process. These salts can be very damaging to your plants. Softened water contains high levels of salt and low levels of essential nutrients like calcium and magnesium, which impedes growth.
If you have softened well water, it’s best to use distilled water on both your indoor and outdoor plants. Softened water is particularly harmful to outdoor plants, more so than tap water from a local municipal supply. The high salt content can stunt growth and even kill your plants, including your grass.
Watering with Distilled Water
Proper watering is essential, regardless of whether you’re using distilled or tap water. If your plants aren’t watered correctly, it won’t matter what type of water you’re using. Improper watering can lead to a weak root system, which weakens the plant and makes it more susceptible to disease. Be sure to follow the proper watering guidelines for each of your plants.
Many houseplants come with care instructions, usually printed on plastic stakes that are placed in the soil. However, not all plants come with these instructions. You may need to look up the information in a book or online. In general, blooming plants and those with a lot of foliage require more water than plants with less foliage. Tropical and woodland plants need less water compared to plants from drier areas.
The season will also impact your plants’ water needs. During warmer temperatures, plants require more water because it tends to evaporate faster. The temperature inside your home also plays a role. In winter, when the heat is on, you may notice that your plants dry out more quickly. The dry air causes the water in the plants to evaporate faster.
When using distilled water, make sure it is at room temperature. If you’re making your own distilled water and have left it outside to distill, bring it inside and allow it to reach room temperature. Distilled water can become very hot in the summer or very cold in the winter. Water that is too hot or too cold can shock the roots and potentially damage or even kill your houseplants.
Making Your Own Distilled Water
You can make your own distilled water at home. Start by using tap water or rainwater collected in a bucket or barrel. Rainwater works well for distillation, as long as it is not too acidic. If the rainwater in your area tends to be acidic, it’s better to use tap water since acids do not dissipate well and can harm your plants.
To distill your own water, fill a clean container with tap water and leave it outside. If you are using rainwater, place a clean container outside to catch it. Allow the water to sit for two days to allow the chlorine and other minerals to dissipate. Once the water is ready, you can use it on your plants. Store any excess water in clean, gallon-sized jugs for later use.
6 Responses
Why must the water be put outside to distill? Couldn’t it distill just as well sitting in my apartment?
Aging water is different from distilling it.
Leaving it to sit is aging, for the sole purpose of removing the chlorine. You can also remove correspond by putting it in a hug and shaking it for 30 seconds. Both work because chlorine is very unstable in solution, coming out of solution easily. (Pool guys add a stabilized to chlorinated pools to get chlorine to remain in solution longer).
Distilled water is water that has been boiled, has evaporated into a gas (waterm vapor), then condensed and collected. The apparatus that does this is called a still (same name for the thing that makes hard alcohol). It can also be referred to as a distiller. The purpose is to separate the pure water from the dissolved and suspended compounds. The other compounds don’t vaporize or condense at the same temps so they separate.
So, aging tap water is good if there is chlorine, then you can use the aged tap water in your outdoor plants. However, tap water still has all the same minerals in it when it’s done aging, but some of the dissolved gasses have changed, mainly less chlorine. So aged tap is still not good for your indoor plants.
Good luck:)
So, the only thing you have to make distilled water is leave outside for two days?
That’s not how you distill water.
This article is very wrong about distilling water. The process it describes will help to get chlorine out of the water (as discussed in Brian’s note) and will be better for watering plants than plain tap water, but distilling is a specific process: you boil the water and capture the vapor, letting it condense back in a liquid that is collected in a container separate from the boiling water. Water will boil (turn to gas) before most of the other things that are also mixed with it, so the vapor is mostly pure water. Everything else is left behind in the original liquid.
An important note is that it will also leave behind potentially beneficial things like minerals, so it may be necessary to supplement certain plants as a result.
So back in the day, the people boiled the water and poured it though cheese cloth and that strained it. Let it cool and pour in clean glass jar. Is this distilled roughed for indoor plants that are now outside plants due to size?