Mulberry thanks for the response and information. Shows extremes can have effects on more than just our gardens. I have looked at several maps showing hard water areas for this region. Most of western OK shows to have hard water. And I remembered it showing eastern ok didn't. Jay

Jay,

We have hard water here and highly alkaline soil as well. I've always known that the hard water affects my plants to a certain extent, but think it probably affects them even more than I originally thought. Next time our water company puts out the report, I'll have to read it, I guess, instead of routinely tossing it into the trash.

The water here is the reason I haven't hauled in bales of peat moss and planted blueberries. To keep the blueberries healthy, I'd have to treat the water before watering and I think that would get old very quickly.

Dorothy,

So, what do you do now in terms of drinking water?

Dawn

I knew a pharmacist in Carter County that brought in all of her drinking water from western Oklahoma because she believed the local water caused kidney stones.

Carol,
Do you think she would be willing to swap drinking water from Elkhart for gardening water from eastern OK? In truck load quantities? LOL. Jay

Jay - this is most interesting, useful and timely info for me! We just learned that the City of Norman is offering to run water out here for us. We were discussing it last nite as to the benefits. We have a LOT of calcium in our water too. Not to mention our water has a stinky smell when it first runs because they didn't bleach the well when they first put it in...and I may be talking out the wrong side but that's the way I understood it.

I do think my houseplants benefit from the well water. It's worked better on my hair too, but I think I need to pay more attention to this subject. Thanks for the info!

Paula

Several times we have received that little post card that says 'Your drinking water is safe, but we are required by law to tell you that we had a reading of such & such'. Of course, I am paraphrasing here.

Anyway, everytime I get one I am glad that most of the water I drink doesn't come from that source of city water. It is a little trouble to pick up the bottles of water, but we feel it is worth it. We have a cooler/heater that holds a five gallon bottle so it is always cold and "on-tap" year round. It also has a heating mechanism which the grandchildren sometimes use in winter for hot chocolate mix. I don't really like hot drinks so I keep it turned off 99% of the time. I have five bottles so normally have a good source of emergency drinking water as well.

I am not so fanatic that I don't get a drink of water from the sink faucet, if I happen to be there, but most of the water I drink comes from bottled water. Is it good for me? I don't know, but it taste good, and taste the same all year long. The city water, on the other hand, changes tastes all of the time, and sometimes has a strong chemical smell to me. We don't have home delivery here, but we pick up 3 or 4 bottles about every 3 weeks. I drink water all day long.

We have laughed because a couple of the guys in the neighborhood will ask if they can come inside and fill their water bottles when they are working outside and their bottle gets empty. We really like the convenience of having the water cooler all year, and not paying the price of indivdual size bottled water.

In addition to the well water which is plumbed into the house, we also have rural water (which is clorinated)in the garden. I run all our drinking water through a filter to get rid of the chlorine.

I too occasionally drink the well water. It is safe and tasty, but not more than about a cup a day.

What a timely post. I'm in SE OK and use water from the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer. The water softener business has always boomed down here. If you boil water in the same pot successively, you'll see the lime deposits very quickly.

I've been seriously gardening for only a few years (unlike your admirable over 40 elk), and have been lax on testing my soil pH. I don't know how many perennials I've planted, thinking, "Good sun, amend the soil a little, water, Amen." And then they'd languish for a season or two and vanish.

My grandfather was a great hybrid of gardener, rock hound, and real estate agent; and I did manage to salvage his soil maps of the area after he died. I really should have paid more attention to why he gathered those maps and what those maps foretell.

Today, as I was digging out a little spot for some perennials, I noticed a large sandstone deposit. I've got sandstone all around my yard and have managed to amend to the soil enough for my small garden to do well enough, but now I'm wondering how my hard water is balancing with what I'm assuming to be acidic sandstone. I really need to test it.

From what I've learned rain tends to be on the acidic side. Which normally helps us here where our soils lean to the alkaline side. But with little rain the last two years I had no rain to leach it out. I do try to water less often and deep water when I do. But when the water I'm using is alkaline and then carrying soluble salts and other minerals I'm not gaining much if any by deep soaking. Using sulphur, bone meal and a soil inoculant my PH dropped from a range of 7.5 -7.9 in 08 to 7.2 this last year. I hadn't had a soil test ran in years. My thought has always been that if the plants look healthy and are producing well things have to be ok. I'm not sure even if I had ran the tests they would of showed much till after the first year of the drought. We went 12 months with just over 4 inches of rain. So basically all my watering was from the faucet. Which compounded the problem. I will continue to test every fall till I have it in line. And then I've promised myself to test at least every 2-3 years. But then thought I had better just keep doing it every year. Because if I ever skip a year then I probably won't test again till I see problems. As you garden you will notice problems fairly fast. What takes a year to develop can take several to correct. Although I've always been able to grow most things I've tried here. Blue berries is one plant that like you said would hang on a few years and struggle then just give it up. Now I know why. Like Dawn I've decided at the present I'm not willing to spend the time it would take to try to maintain a PH level to grow them properly. Here the extension service will run I believe two tests a year for you free. Then after that they are like five dollars if you are a Kansas resident. Unless you want a more detailed test then they go up. I think two comprehensive tests this year cost me around $30.00. And normally one would be enough. But I broke a new area and last year was the first year for it. So wanted to test it as I knew there would be a difference between the two and there was. Jay