Ever since I started my vast collection of orchids, and maintaining my collection of houseplants, I have just been using the water that comes from our tap with fertilizer occasionally mixed in, to water all of my plants. After attending some Orchid Society meetings and talking with others, I decided to see how our water rated as far as PH, Hardness and minerals go.
As plant enthusiasts, we talk a lot about light, humidity and the perfect potting medium, but we rarely seem to think about the quality of our water and how it can affect our plants. We all think water is just water, right? That's what I thought for the longest time.
To give you a little background on my setup: when our house was originally built, it relied entirely on well water. Eventually, the municipal lines moved into our area, and we switched over to city water for our everyday use. However, we decided to keep the well active as a supplement. For a long time, the well was just "there," but as my collection grew, I started wondering if I was sitting on a hidden resource... or a hidden problem. This led me to my kitchen counter with a water testing kit and a mission to see which faucet my orchids actually preferred.
I went on Amazon and got a 16-1 testing kit: Varify 17in1 Complete Drinking Water Test Kit - 100 Strips + 2 Bacteria Tester Kits and decided to run a couple of tests on our water to see what the results would be.
I started the test with our tap water.
(As a side note: The colors on the test strips don't always convey accurately in the photos, but they were very distinct in person!)
