I keep hearing people tell me they use mostly rain water and I can't wait until I'm somewhere where I can set up a system for that. Your comment had me wondering something though... when you water your neps, I've seen pics of your set up and you let your water drain into containers. (a system I might add, that I also use and it has helped big time with humidity) Anyway, the question... do you re-use that water? So far, most of my run off water has been evaporating but I have been concidering sucking it up and putting it back on the neps. I don't forsee any problems with doing that since the water that ran through the soil of the neps would have only picked up the materials already in their pots. Just wondering what you think about it. Here is a link that might be useful: Aracknight's Deadly Delights

Okay, people, you also don't want the minerals in the water in your head, either! Use water that's distilled or treated by reverse osmosis (labeled "purified" when you buy it at the store). Water boiled for 20 minutes is okay if you can't get distilled/r.o. but pure is better. You can use kitchen salt, but the little packets that are meant for the job are gentler if you have sores from an infection or nosebleed. Plain water, rather than saline (with the salt in it) can hurt more than it helps because it'll dry out your nasal tissues.

Wow, very interesting everyone on all your views and what you all do. As for me I will answer my own questions too in the hopes it will help others also) I was wondering if many here uses rain water and consider it a very important to the success to your orchids? Yes, I do and when I do the roots always look more vibrant and healthy. When I use tap, it discolors my pots, roots to my orchids and seems to make many of the tips of my plants turn brown. Take for instant 'ptothos'. I can't use tap water. I can't use my tap water on my palms, carnivorous plants, ferns and mosses along with all of my orchids. How do you collect it? I collect water in a 30 gallon bucket from my roof from a roof gutter that pours it straight into it. Then I use a hose and sifon all the water I collect into my 30 gallon buckets in my basement. 6 to be exact. Enough to last me thorugh the whole year when I keep refilling. I do use tap water for all outside plants and baskets. Do you use bottled water? Not for plants , just for humidifer use along with bottled water. Tap water would destroy my machines. Do you use tap? Only for outdoor plants, and to flush out my orchids, which I will come right behind when I have time and rinse with rain water. Do you flush your orchid pots and how often? Yes, once a week at least. The roots always fatten up and turn a rich green . When I just water or use a sprayer, the roots seem to stay partially dehydrated anyways. Why do you you use rain water? It's cleaner, very low TDS (2ppm). Rainwater also contains a little nitrogen. Do you SOAK your orchids or just water them in? Both) Do you feel it's important to spray your orchids and why? I do this to wet everything near where my orchids sit, and top moisten the top layer of many of them while the bottom still dries out. It's easier for me to do this with mounted ones. those I can't reach in the green house, and to keep the spider mites in check and leaves clean. Do you use a humidifier? A BIG FAT yes!! I don't use one in my greenhouse or my sunroom that does not have a heating system in there. I do use one in my sunny warm heated room uspstairs where I sleep and where all my plants reside of the air in there would be bone dry and warm. Do you measure the moisture in the growin room? I use a standard humidity/temp meter. I have to know how much humidity I have in there to make sure there is not too much to prevent mold issues and too little to prevent plant issues. So I adjust my humdifier accordingly. Thansks for all the feedabck. I had no idea about water and the issues they can prevent like explained above. I wish I could afford to use a RO machine or I would do that too. Thanks everyone.

Hello all, I originally posted this in the generic container gardening forum but I thought that I might get more responses here since my question mainly pertains to mosses. I've been lurking around on these forums for a while now and have learned a ton. I've bought the materials for the 5-1-1 and gritty mix and can't wait to get my plants in some new soil. So regarding my current issue. I really like ferns and I've been trying unsuccesfully to grown different types of mosses around my ferns. The moss survives, but it never ¨takes¨ by attaching itself to the substrate and beginning to grow. It just sort of hangs on but the tips slowly brown until the point that the moss dies. I'm sure it is not a moisture problem as I've been very dilligent in keeping the moss wet (at one point I was heavily misting them twice a day). We also have a fairly humid client and don't have heating or ac so the air inside stays fairly moist. I've slowly come to the conclusion that my tap water is the culprit for the mosses woes. I finally got all of the chemical information from our tap water supplier today, so I'm wondering if someone more knowledgeable than I could sift through these numbers and tell me what is killing the moss.. Once we have that determined, I'd love to hear possible solutions. On a related note, the water seems to be very hard and full of calcium and calcium carbonate and these calcium deposits have already started building up considerable scale on my terra cotta pots (mainly around the rims). Is that going to be an issue? I am fairly careful to flush my containers with 20-30% extra water (percentage based off volume of the container), which should be flushing the excess salts out of the soil, but it doesn't seem to prevent buildup on the pot itself. Without further ado, I'm attaching two screenshots of my tap water's chemical makeup. In case you are wondering, the language if Catalan. The column titled ¨resultat¨ means result, and the ¨limit¨ column is the legal limit established for every line item. Most of the chemical names should be farely straightforward and the element abbreviations are next to the mg/l measurements. It seems like there is no column summing Total Dissolved Solids. Without being sure exactly how to calculate TDS (I summed all of the metals, bicarbonates, chlorine, and sulfates) I arrived at a figure around 930 mg/l or ppm. To my untrained eye, the biggest problem seems to be the 153 mg/l of Chloride (same as ppm I believe) and the 90 mg/l of Sodium. However, I know very little about what proportions of these elements are dangerous to plants, especially moss. The biggest problem could be the 200 mg/l of dissolved bicarbonates, for all I know. Thanks in advance to anyone who helps shed light on all of this! Peace, Brent