Anyone else do this? Would Ivory soap be ok or is there something safer for the plant life? And what about fabric softener? Thanks for your advise.

Nancy

A friend of mine says her plants love it.

She uses a detergent with no additives, & the only fabric softener she uses are the dryer sheets.

Best luck!

Since we have to water the pots by hand, that shouldn't be too overwhelming. If we were running a drip irrigation system or sprinkler in a larger garden, obviously we would need a more elaborate setup. It's definitely something to think about in the house we want to have someday -- once we're out of grad school & such.

I just put in a new shower and I am going to use the water in my flower beds. Between my wife and I that is 40 gallons a day. That works out to about a 4 ft by 8 ft flower bed with 2 inches of water every day. I could divide that into 7 beds and have enough water left for a tiny bog garden.

I could have blooms all summer and not have an extra load on my well.

I'm not sure if you even have a washer/dryer in your apartment, or if reusing that water would be feasible for you. In my house I tried to pipe my laundry water directly outside, but until I find something to gasket the washer/pvc interface, it won't work. So I bought a big garbage can to pump the water into on laundry days. Then I use the utility pump to send it outside. I actually prefer it that way because I can water the garden at a time of my choosing--instead of when the washer is emptying.

If you have a double sink, you can keep a dishtub in one of them for catching rinsewater. Little bits of food are no problem for the plants. This makes it easy to collect pasta or potato water, too.

I am not going to collect the water just let it free flow into a flex pipe and move it every day.

Every thing is down hill for me so I will not need to pump water.

I also have a couple large plastic barrels I'll use to collect rain water.

Nancy

Would water from the washer with bleach or oxyclean in it hurt anything? I don't use bleach often and could always just not use it if necessary....

You say you use potatoe water for your plants?

I got the idea to use pasta water for my house plants from this board and had no problems. The extra nutrients really did seem to benefit my plants I thought.

Then one day I thought, aha! Potatoe water! I watered all my different houseplants with it and, BOOM, they *all* went dead.

I know that parts of the potatoe plants are poisonous (leaves) and I peel my potatoes before I boil them, so I just don't know what happened except that chemicals in potatoes may be poisonous to plants.

I don't boil in salt water. (A newbie mistake.)

I let the water cool. (Another newbie mistake.)

Maybe I have found a "natural" weed killer for my garden????

Anyone know anything about potatoe water on plants?