In my case the thermal mass is adjustable - I can run the water through several different loops for heating or cooling (where I live cooling is more of an issue than heating) using the sun to heat (black pipe in the sun) or evaporation to cool (using a swamp cooler as a water cooling system). I use some cheap high head low flow centrifugal pumps for moving the water round (they are each rated at 25W) and a 250W centrifugal pump with pressure vessel and pressure switch to supply the sprayers. Another advantage of my layout is all the excess water runs back into the tank (but I don't wish to drink that water). I can do this because I don't use any fish toxic chemicals in my greenhouse, and because I have a UVC sterilizer to prevent the water going stale and killing my fish. It may not be practical in colder climates where the tank could freeze solid, though heating your greenhouse by heating the stored water may be an efficient way to spread the low grade heat evenly through the greenhouse. The roof runoff goes directly into a mini-bog garden (in the greenhouse) which filters out the dust and dirt fairly effectively. First flush diverters are a cheap solution and do remarkably well - just put a vertical pvc pipe inline before the main downspout and add a single dripper to the bottom. A sump pump will probably be suitable to drive drippers, but I don't believe that they have a pressure cut-off switch or checkvalve so you'll have to control your irrigation by switching the pump on and off. If you want to drive misters you'll probably need a proper pressurising pump.

diggerdee, yes, definately japanese beetles. I fought them with roses for years until I finally decided to move on to a plant that bloomed longer and therefore was worth the fight! I have been picking them off everyday for about 4 days and dropping them into a bucket of suds and water and I have not seen any on my echinacea or dahlias (they were eating those, too) for about 2 or 3 days, so maybe that is working. I hope so. Time will tell.

.. I ended up moving to a small yard and was looking at the blow/vac shred things. The advice I got was get one with a metal impeller - not plastic. Through circumstances I ended up buying an electric stand up shredder thing, an Eco Shredder 1600. Works fine. Reduces the volume a lot. I am out there raking leaves once a week but I guess I can put up with that in a small yard. When I burn out the eco shredder, I'll go for the blow/vac for this small yard. The mulcher mower worked great when I was only mulching but when I went to mulch and bag not so hot. Most mulcher mowers work by creating a vortex that cycles the material through the blade action at least three times but if you're bagging the stuff, the egress to the bag breaks the vortex and stuff only passes the blades once. I also mow my grass high so that mucks up the mulching vortex too. I tried looking for a good mulching mower but there's a dearth of information on that particular feature. I guess I should have gotten the gumption to try renting out mowers from different places. Still, I used to rake leaves onto the lawn before mowing so the mower would chop them some and mix the leaves up with the grass clippings saving me that effort. Most of the time, that was good enough. to sense ..

John, Don't worry about thinking your are being too assertive... no offense is taken. I'm just genuinely curious as to why the soft water is perceived as being so terrible. I often see many quite firm statements on a variety of topics (water, fertilizer, temperature, sunlight, methods for planting in ground, etc...) related home gardening. There is a sound horticultural basis behind many of these recommendations, but at the same time I see many firm recommendations that for most people likely make no difference one way or the other. I don't see the point of having this huge list of varying do's and don'ts if a large portion of the recommendations either are minimally helpful, or don't really have any impact. When I began growing container citrus several years ago, I started out all gung-ho trying to do everything under the sun that was recommended to make my trees happy especially in winter (grow lights, supplemental heating, boosting the humidity, etc...). The end result invariably was sickly looking trees. I've had much better luck not really doing too much and allowing the trees to acclimate gradually on their own to whatever their current environment happens to be. Getting back to the soft water question. I completely agree that too much sodium chloride will kill plants, especially citrus. I would also add that too much salt of any kind could kill your plants, of course the lethal concentrations will vary quite widely depending on the specific toxicities. An ion exchange water softener does not add sodium chloride to the water. The sodium chloride is just used to regenerate the ion exchange resin by saturating it with sodium ions. The softening process only replaces the magnesium and calcium ions with sodium. The primary anion before and after treatment should remain carbonate, no additional chloride is added. Since sodium carbonate is much more soluble in water than either magnesium or calcium carbonate, one could argue that it would be more difficult to build up high concentrations of it in the container. This is assuming that one flushes their container with excess water on a semi regular basis. Nevertheless, I doubt this aspect really makes much significant difference one way or the other if the container is being flushed with water periodically. While thinking about this whole issue, I also came across several research papers that investigate the effects of salinity on citrus. The primary toxic effects of "salinity" on citrus are increased osmotic stress and specific ion toxicities. Again, if one is flushing their container with water semi-regularly, osmotic stress should never become an issue, as the excess accumulated salts will be washed out regularly. With respect to ion toxicity, the general consensus seems to be that chloride is a more significant issue than sodium. However, the water softening process does not really add any chloride to the the treated water, therefore its concentration is no different than in the untreated water. The concentration of sodium carbonate in the "softened" water is also not really ever going to be that high (in the neighborhood of 200 ppm, if the input water is classified as very hard). I've seen a study (link below) that subjected citrus to salt (sodium chloride and/or calcium chloride) at concentrations up to 6000 ppm. Although the differences in response to the salt challenge were clearly noticeable among the tested cultivars, the most significantly damaged trees only showed a "slight marginal burn" on the leaves. So even assuming there was 200 ppm sodium chloride in the softened water, it would take several months of watering with no flushing of the soil to build up to these high salt concentrations where there are clearly visible toxicity effects. In summary, I do not see any scientific basis for why "softened" water should be perceived as so bad for citrus culture. At the same time, there is not much evidence that it has any significant benefits. In the absence of finding any direct studies investigating this question, I think the issue is largely irrelevant for container citrus culture. If a few basic care practices are observed (mainly not treating your soil as a black hole in which an infinite amount of fertilizer and soluble salts from the water supply can be allowed to accumulate), it shouldn't really matter. I will add one final caveat, if signs of salt toxicity do happen to appear irrespective of the water source, then one should absolutely start trying to isolate and correct the problem. John, I'm curious to know if you have any additional thoughts. In any case, cheers, and thanks for the discussion! -Scott PS Susan, my sincere apologies for taking your thread off on a little tangent. Here is a link that might be useful: Salt tolerance of some citrus