Water is Killing Your Indoor Plants

Yellowing plants, brow spots, slow growth, death. It could be your water.

I love my house plants but I learned the hard way how to keep them green.

The Cautionary Tale

My first house plant was a lucky bamboo. It was a gift to wish me luck at a new job. I put the water based ( hydroponic) bamboo next a window and kept the vase full of water and let it grow. One day I noticed there was some mineral buildup on the stock, unsurprising since I live in Arizona where the water is quite hard and full of chlorine and salts.. reduce, reuse, recycle! I didn’t think much of it and kept watering the Bamboo with sink water.

Slowly the leafs turned bright yellow and the tips turned white. I couldn’t tell what was happening. My beautiful bamboo was dying. After much research I narrowed it down to one thing, the water.

Water

Tap water contains chlorine, salts and minerals. These are all perfectly safe for humans, but they can kill your house plants. In the nature plants primary source of water is rain. Rain is typically chlorine free water. There are few salts or minerals in rain . When the rain hits the Earth the dirt helps to filter out and disperse potential salts in the dirt around the plant.

In a pot there is no where for these salts and minerals to go but in to your plant. Even in a large pot, there is no way to replicate what the Earth does for plants. However, there are things you can do to get the greenest plants.

Buy Distilled Water

The easiest answer is distilled water. Distilled water is water that has been boiled and cooled so all the salts and minerals evaporates out, leaving nothing but pure water. Typically distilled water can be bought for less than a dollar at any grocery store or gas station, i’s easy and ready to use at room temperature.

Let Tap Water Sit

Fill up a pitcher of water from the tap and let it sit out over night. This is a less than perfect method, it will not remove all the salts and chlorine but it will help evaporate some of it out. You can also use a water from a filter, still letting it sit over night. Make sure water is room temperature before watering plants or they can die from cold water shock.

DIY Distilled Water

This is the hardest method, I highly recommend spending a dollar and buying a gallon of distilled water. However, if you’re feeling ambitious you can find instructions here.

Once you switch to distilled water your plants will look greener, more colorful and grow faster. They will thank you by giving you flowers, extra growth and deep green leafs.

Looking for a deep green plant? Check out the Monstera.