pH level in bonsai .....

We are fortunate to have very good tap water in my city... the water treatment facility publishes water quality reports regularly and mails it to customers with a monthly statement. It is probably also available online and your local community may have similar information available. For my irrigation system I have a well.

John Quinn wrote:We are fortunate to have very good tap water in my city... the water treatment facility publishes water quality reports regularly and mails it to customers with a monthly statement. It is probably also available online and your local community may have similar information available. For my irrigation system I have a well.

The Federal Safe Drinking Water act requires city water companies to furnish that information -- or at least make it available.

this thread was / is a really good read and time to give it a BUMP .

i calibrated a new high end ph meter we need for work this afternoon and out of curiosity ran off 120 liters of my tap water into a barrel - tested 8.7.    

2 hrs later 8.6 - - i smile at early comments about "ignore ph, trust your tap water, neutral is fine so dont make things complicated" - frankly this is a load of rubbish as how can you trust in something you dont know the level of without testing ?

in the hot / dry spell we are well and truly having here I have been using the hose most evenings for weeks now, as well as the watering can of acidified solutions at the weekend and a big container that can soak a whole pot and tree if needed. Doing this (using the tapwater) has changed several of my trees colour to a much paler green - white pines, white beech, a garden potted standard baytree, many newly imported trees etc

the soil components and part of our fertiliser regime has obviously helped shift the ph more towards neutral but thats the end of lazy hose watering for me - water butt, test and shift ph to 6 for my collection xxx and water from there with pump or can.....(xxx observation shows several trees thriving - great colour, healthy growth etc so these will be hose watered - several chochubai quince are stunning, all the junipers thrive - the collected japanese mountain trees are from alkaline areas originally) . i know tap water ph shifts depending upon supply, maintenance work, treatments etc so each time a barrel is filled it will be checked and adjusted - i put money on the white pines going deeper in colour again - if so ph is not something to be dismissed straight away

cheers,