A Word on Water

In an ideal world I would have a limitless supply of readily accessible rainwater to use for my indoor houseplants.  However, I can't always rely on a steady supply of this (though I have coerced my father into gathering the rainwater that collects from a little plastic-roofed shed I built at my parents' house).  There can be droughts, lack of collection, and other things that could impact my flow.

When I start running low on my bottled rainwater, I ration it off to the plants that are most requiring of it.  The orchids and the African violets are the plants I try to always feed with rainwater.  The other plants will be all right with the tap water.

If I am watering with tap water, I try to incorporate the smallest ration of fertilizer specified on the container.  I like to use Jack's Classic Water Soluble Plant Food, in the generic proportion of 15-30-15.  For my orchids, I use the orchid proportion, which is 30-10-10.  African violets are the only plants for which I currently do not use any fertilizer.

We received a steady amount of snow this winter, and I am kicking myself for not acting on this earlier.  In the last blasting of snow, I decided to scoop up a big tub of it and let it melt into sweet precious plant water.

My two tubs from the last snow fall.  This yielded over 6 gallons!

If I had done this every day, I could have melted weeks and weeks of rainwater stock!  Part of the problem was trying to find containers to scoop the snow into (I have a lot of things in storage right now!), and trying to find galloon jugs in which to store the water long term.

The few gallons I was able to get (more like half dozen or so), I decided to sprinkle in some of my fertilizer, just to make it a super deluxe natural and enhanced feeding for my plants, as they enter the growing season.

The jug on the left is with 1/8 teaspoon of the fertilizer.
It looks distinctly blue, which is rather unusual,
perhaps I actually added more than 1/8?