SB, I had salt buildup on the soil of my houseplants at work. It turns out the (beep-beep) cleaning lady had taken it upon herself to give my plants a 'little drink' of water every day. I finally figured it out after she butchered one of my big plants. She said she thought it needed trimming. I was absolutely livid.

So yes, I think it can be an issue on plants other than citrus if not watered properly.

Cindy

The issue isn't so much the species of plant, because most plants we will ever come in contact with, will experience salt toxicity at some level.
The problem occurs with container plants/gardening. The salts get trapped in the container, with a concentration of root systems. If they are planted out in the soil, there is no bottom to allow salt build up. It will simply flush through. It isn't really too much of a problem with just watering. The fertilizers we use are the culprits. So, when container gardening, you should water 110%. It isn't a bad idea to flood them once in a while to completely wash everything out, but make sure you fertilize directly after, to replace nutrients.
The difference in most of us and professional growers is that they are pushing their stock as hard as they can to get the maximum growth in the shortest period of time. We have pushed trees so hard that their skin literally split because it couldn't keep up with the growth.
Also remember, we could do the same, push our plants really hard, but with every action there is a reaction.

Weebus, if I understand you correctly, pro-growers risk salt buildup because they push the plants along as much as possible with fert. But I do disagree about the water not being a problem. I have chipped flakes of lime out of pots watered with our well water. Deposits of lime are left anywhere the hose leaks or the water overflows the pots. Those kinds of deposits can't be good for the containers or the roots of the plant.

I completely agree about it being a problem with containerized plants. But what, really, is the raised bed in my GH? It's lined with plastic, with landscape fabric on the bottom to hold in the soil and permit drainage. It seems to me that it's really just a great big container. Sure, it's big, so it salt build up may not be a problem for a long time, but eventually, maybe it will...I don't know, I'm just throwing the question out there. :-)

SB

stressbaby,

I think the problem with minerals in the water is indeed an important factor. I too have very hard well water with an incredibly high iron content.

The lime and iron deposits once formed do not seem to wash away. Even after just a year a hard crust formed on the top of the dirt in pepper pots.

Most of what I grow is only fed two or three times in flats then it is transplanted outdoors after a few weeks. Even so, there is a build up of limescale and iron and I have to wash them in a solution of limescale remover to get them clean.

The point?

Next season I am going to collect and use as much rainwater as I can. The priority for the rainwater will be the tomatoes, peppers etc in containers. What is spare will suppliment my well water for bedding plants.

You may look into ways of removing the dissolved minerals in your well water. Fill a trash can with water and bubble air through it for a couple of days. The dissolved iron oxidizes and falls to the bottom as a sludge, also some of the other minerals become insoluble and form a gritty/sandy deposit. (adding chlorine also does the same thing, but we don't want to do that do we? :) )

I have an answer/comment that may help. There are a lot of different plants that have adapted to the myriad of different conditions that make up the world. Trees that grow in on and through rock, salt bushes that tolerate very high salt levels,sea weed that grows in the sea,cacti that live on almost no water, etc.

Then we come along and pamper our favorite plants/vegeatables and if conditions are not right for them they fold.

Town water is treated with chemicals to make it potable,and if used to water plants leave a residue, most commonly a salt of one sort or another. The only answer is to flood water as much as possible to reduce/flush the salt level down to tolerable levels. Unfortunately this method wastes water, flushes out nutrients, and is not a complete cure all.

Bore or well water gives rise to other types of soil contamination.

Rain water (except for acid rain) is the universal panacea for healthy plant growth, except of course for those perverse types of plants some of which are listed above that have their own agenda.

My approach is to try growing plants where I live and if they are to much trouble throw in the towel and try another. Here in coastal north Queensland, Australia, Summer time is to hot for most vegeatables, not all, for instance Snake/Long Beans do well, if the monsoon comes that is. I live in town and the water is treated with sodium hyper chloride, which leaves a residue of NaCl!!

Winter time is okay with the same proviso regarding regular rain.

The decorative natives do okay and that is all that can be relied upon !!!

Might put a bore down. The groundwater is okay I hear.

So what is new.

I can't believe I let this thread die out so easily. The one thing that was never brought up, and is one of the more important things to do is to use a water filter. Not an RO machine, nothing that fancy. Just a plain old water filter. You need to have your water tested to see what's in it anyway. I think the local extension office will do that rather inexpensively. So, just watering is OK and you shouldn't have to worry about build-up in a container environment if you have a filter on your water supply. It is also a good idea for those who have flouride in their drinking water...

A water filter filters out the SOLIDS. What we are talking about is dissolved substances that happily pass through water filters but when they come into contact with atmospheric oxygen they become solids.

""It is also a good idea for those who have flouride in their drinking water..."" Um.. a "filter" will not remove flouride in drinking water. The flouride is dissolved.

Passing that water through a bed of activated charcoal however will trap the flouride and chlorine and the dissolved hydrogen sulphate.

Passing water through a "filter" will not "soften" it.

Passing water through a "filter" will not reduce the iron content.

Actually, I don't believe activated carbon will have any effect on fluoride (note spelling, not flouride!), activated carbon is mostly used for volatile organics. To remove fluoride ions you need ion exchange or RO. I'm not convinced that fluoride ions at tap water concentrations have any significant effect on plants. Having said that, I've often wondered why fluoride is added to tap water.

I suppose fluoride is added for reasons dental.

So we have deposits as a result of oxidation and we have substances that arrive dissolved (soluble) and simply precipitate out. In the former category are ferric oxide and calcium hydroxide (lime). These substances are insoluble...it seems to me that flushing the soil would have limited effect on these substances. It is my understanding that in this form they are of limited availability to the plant.

And in the latter category we have other soluble salts. These are the salts that should be reduced with soil flushing.

So which salts am I removing if I flush the soil? Am I only removing precipitates of soluble salts in the soil?

This isn't true chris? I am just taking it from the people in the know, and the fact we have them inline in all of our GHs at work. I have one on my home system which supplies the GH...Mr Well man that comes by every 6 months to service mine seems to think it does. I don't know, I am not a chemist, but there are several people who seem to think they work. I just pulled this one up for a reference. Take a look

Here is a link that might be useful: water filter

If you believe the add, this system eliminates heavy metals, fluorine, and chlorine, but if you started with hard water, at the end of the line, you still have hard water. The Ca++, Mg++, and Na+ remain dissolved in solution. SB

We have to be careful about terminology here. To me a water filter is a mechanical process with fine holes that stop debris. A water purifier adds at least activated carbon or ion exchange. The best systems have a filter, activated carbon, ion exchange, pre-treament(changing the pH I believe), RO and finally post-treatment to restore certain minerals for buffering.

What do people mean precisely?

Regarding fluoride and dental, wikipedia has an article on The Fluoridation controversy, but even ignoring that, I don't understand why we had fluoride to water when it's already in far more effective form in toothpaste! (It's a bit like putting a dash of sunscreen in the water to reduce skin cancer!). It just means that most people then filter it out...

To control lime you can precipitate it out using CO2 injection, which reacts with CaOH to form CaCO3 (i.e. limestone). I doubt this is effective on iron oxide, but iron oxide is of low toxicity anyway. As a lot of people are injecting CO2 into their greenhouse anyway, applying it in the water seems like a reasonable solution (sic).

On another thread I suggested bubbling air through a holding tank of well water for a couple of days before using it.

The iron compounds precipitate and also the lime component does too.

Maybe for some peoples well water there is not a high iron or calcium content. However some of us have that problem.

Weebus.
The link you posted... It states ""Heavy duty 1 micron sediment filter removes dirt, rust, scale, silt, sand and other suspended particles including cysts such as crytospridium and giardia to produce sparkling clean, clear water.""

Well I am sad to say that the "Water Cleaning Prefilter" would last for about 30 to 40 gallons of well water here before it clogged. It seems the unit you posted a link to is designed for treating "city" water.

I run a 20 micron pre filter and then a 5 micron charcoal filter in the house. The pre filter lasts 2 weeks and the charcoal one lasts a month.

The house system is just designed to get rid of the sediment from the well and the nasty iron smell.

I run well water. Work has well water...

My well water must have a different mineral content then.

Have any of you tried using an organic surfactant such as Nitron A-35, one teaspoon to a gallon of water every time houseplants/greenhouse plants are watered? Or, you could purchase 'yucca extract' on line which is also an organic surfactant. I have used surfactants in this manner for many years. They help a plant absorb plant foods and wash out excess salts/minerals in the soil.

How does a polar-non-polar surfactant help remove ionic(polar) compounds from a polar solution? I'm sure they help with wetting, but I can't see them helping in the slightest with salts.

It helps to wash the salts through the soil...

The Nitron A-35 promotional literature says nothing about washing salts through the soil. The closest it comes is to say "helps detoxify," whatever that means.

Nathan is right, it doesn't seem to make any sense from a high school chemistry point of view.

Again I'll ask, precisely which salts are removed when one flushes the soil?

SB

SB Are you asking us to NAME the salts that are being leached? If that is what you are asking, it is impossible to answer that question, because no one uses all the same fertilizers from teh same manufactures. If that isn't what you are asking, I too dumb to understand yet. Could you please restate the question for this thick head?