How to acidify alkaline water in the north

Most of the water in the north is alkaline. If you use this kind of water to water flowers for a long time, it will be difficult for the flowers to grow well. Let’s look at ways to remedy this.

Rainwater flowers

As long as you are willing, you don't have to use the watering can at home. In rainy areas, you can collect some rainwater and store it for watering the flowers.

Soak the leaves before use

Usually I find a small jar and put some fruit peels in it. Fresh pea shells, leaves or vegetable leaves can be soaked today and used for watering. This water contains certain fertilizers and has a certain acidity, which is more suitable for watering flowers. But be careful not to over-soak, which will cause the shell to rot.

Acidification of pharmaceuticals

The main method of treating water is to add chemicals to the water, commonly used ones are FeSO4 and vinegar. If conditions permit, oxalic acid is also good.

The hardness of water in different regions is different, so the amount of medicine added is also different. You should do an experiment when using it for the first time. Add the medicine gradually to the water and test it with PH test paper. When the PH value drops to 5.5 , write down the amount of medicine used.

If there are no conditions for testing, you can use other people's empirical methods. Some recommend 0.1% FeSO4 , and some recommend adding 4 ml of vinegar to 1 liter of water. Both methods are mature and reliable methods, but people have different suggestions for different dosages. I added 1 gram of oxalic acid to 3 liters of water. After it became turbid and formed a white precipitate, I added 1 gram of FeSO4 . This solution was not very stable and often turned into rust color. If you change the order and add both at the same time, no deep precipitation will be formed. I don't care about the result, I just water it directly, and the effect is very good. The azaleas that were damaged by hard water and had become weak and yellow slowly began to recover. The azaleas that were treated with this solution at the beginning grew better. Some people use fruit peels to acidify them in water, which has a significant effect in lowering the pH value, but this method has not been recommended in various books or papers, and its other effects may still be unknown.

To prevent the prepared solution from being of suboptimal concentration and causing damage to accumulate over time, you can often overwater the plant and discard the water flowing out of the bottom of the pot to flush the pot and keep the environment inside the pot stable.