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can you use bath water on tomatoe plants
10 Jul, 2010
Answers
Take a look at this website Guest
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Greywater.htm
It is doable but you probably need to change some of your washing habits!
10 Jul, 2010
I would use your bath water if you need to, we syphon our bath water and re-use our washing machine water too and nothing has been damaged by this usage, if there is a drought I would have thought that any water is better than none and we are in the middle of a very serious drought right now.
10 Jul, 2010
Snag is Grandmage apparently there are a lot of pollutants in regular washing products that build up in the soil. I would have no qualms about using ours because everything we use is eco. friendly.
11 Jul, 2010
Yes of course there are but its water (with pollutants) and we are running short, It is quite desperate, although we had three drops of rain this morning, I know because we were having breakfast in the garden at the time !
11 Jul, 2010
That info I gave, Grandmage, was from Gardener's Question time last weekend. And for anyone else - hooray, the wind's changed direction, its coming from the West, and we have clouds carrying rain arriving - at last! Supposed to be a wettish week, hope it is.
11 Jul, 2010
Hope it is too Bamboo, water butt been empty since march ! Wanted to say we have been recycling our water since the summer of 76 !
11 Jul, 2010
The simple solution is to use eco. products then the water is safe to use for anything. Perhaps the governments should also do more to encourage all new build to have grey water treatment - this would mean the water could be reused in the home too for all but actual drinking and cooking. I know friends did this and it has meant that their water bills are much lower.
11 Jul, 2010
I like the sound of that MG. but I suppose the cost is phenomenal.
11 Jul, 2010
Not sure it is if done at time of building Grandmage, it is like the ground heat pumps and other ways of saving energy - if you do when building the house not so expensive if you try to retro fit costs a lot more. I think it is extremely unlikely that we would ever build a new house but if we did we would most certainly fit grey water treatment and a ground heat pump. Every space would be super insulated and we'd triple glaze too.
11 Jul, 2010
That's been my dream for a few years, MG - I have friends in Cornwall who have spent the last 2 years doing exactly that - new build (doing most of it themselves). Very exciting and interesting, and now, for me, it'll remain just a dream... like lots of other things, lol!
12 Jul, 2010
At the beginning of this season due to my water butt not receiving any water from above I decided to connect all the water from my baths, showers and wash hand basin to a water butt that is then connected via a pipe to 4 water butts round my greenhouse.
This is connected to a submerged water pump in one of the water butts and that is then connected via hozelock connection to my hosepipe, enabling free watering every day.
However I have just been listening to the news regarding e coli in cucumbers and tomatoes watered with contaminated water.
My plants appear to be thriving fantastic.
Do I need to be concerned?
29 May, 2011
I wouldn't have thought so. Yes you will have water that you washed your hands in after using the loo but that will be very dilute. In Spain in some places they actually spray human sewage on the land and I would not be at all surprised to discover this was the cause. We al have a small amount of e-coli bacteria in our gut the one killing people is a specific virulent strain.
29 May, 2011
Faecal contamination is the cause of e-coli, as far as I'm aware - I've not seen any proper detail about the cause of the outbreak from cucumbers grown in Spain, but if they do what Moongrower says above, that would explain it. I think I might start making sure my cucumbers aren't Spanish from now on.
29 May, 2011
I think we should all be a lot more careful and aware where our food is coming from. Growing practices out with the UK are not necessarily up to the same standard. Take a look at this piece in a US on-line newspaper
http://bit.ly/iT1AYJ
There is no proof only speculation right now... but I'll be checking where my cucumbers come from!
29 May, 2011
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Presumably you use shower gel or soap in the water, and if your tomatoes are in pots, the answer is no - if you use some form of organic, chemical free, soap free substance in the bath, then its okay.
10 Jul, 2010