I’m getting closer to starting two plants. I’m trying to finalize my plan. This will be my first grow. I’m growing two plants in a 4x8x7 One side will have 600 watts of lighting from the wall and the other side will have 480 from the wall I’ve been debating on buying a reverse osmosis unit for under the sink. Either that or drive 10-12 miles and fill 5 gallon jugs when needed What would you guys do if your city water looked like this? I’ll post the info about the city water. Would you use city water and just adjust the ph up and ph down, drive and fill jugs, or get a reverse osmosis unit? I’m trying to simplify this grow as much as possible. I’ll attach screen shots of the chart.
<-- hose water. Years of it. Most City water supplies are deliberately high PH to protect old iron pipes in the system. I run Sulfur in my soil mix to keep the PH centered and omit the Lime. BNW
pour it on the ground outside and see if anything grows there. Driving for water will make you crazy if you accidentally mess up a batch and don't want to drive again. Water is more of an issue in pure hydro. If you use a medium, the medium contributes to water quality. Peat is used to lower ph. Lime is used to raise ph. Roots don't suck up impurities and then distribute them to the flowers. Give them some credit for at least that much intelligence. They are not as stupid as some people imagine.
I understand that I’m going to be using organic soil I’m not trying to look too far into the water deal but I want to make things simple
Distilled is not good by itself. But it can be used to cut tap water down to something reasonable. Usually 1/4 tsp per gallon of epsom is added to the distilled. I would not go more than 50/50 distilled/tap. I have a counter top one gallon $80 ebay distiller, but it is quite a pain to make a gallon in the summer time with all the heat and humidity involved. But once you get the hang of it and know when it will be worth the hassle it can solve some problems.
Switching to reverse osmosis changed the game for me. My towns water was always changing rapidly and my plants didn't like that one bit. My last harvest I used only my towns water and managed to get 9 ounces off of 4 plants. I switched to RO for the next grow and didn't change anything else, not even the strains and this time I managed to get 16.5 ounces! 100% because my plants weren't dealing with wacky water.