Well water turning bamboo yellow

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MikeSS

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I've done a little research and learned that the sulfur smell in my well water is caused by sulfur-reducing bacteria which forms all kinds of different compounds as it reacts with iron, manganese and other minerals and vegetative materials. Hydrogen Sulfide gas is highly toxic - it's what kills miners and well diggers. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that my bamboo doesn't like it.

My well water is just for irrigation but the water bonanza I thought I had once I got the well going has turned out to be problematical. Bamboo is a pretty tough plant and my once-lush forest of it has suffered over time as our normally scarce rain in SoCal has all but disappeared. As city water has gotten more expensive following several years of drought I've naturally cut back on my irrigation. So when the practically unlimited amount of water became available from my well, I used it generously on my water-starved vegetation. The bamboo responded with new growth and initially seemed glad to have the water, but then I noticed mature plants turning yellow that until then had been green. Some plants aren't bothered by it but papyrus, citrus and a few others don't like the water at all. Others, succulents mostly, don't seem to care about the H2S and/or whatever else is in the water.

Hydrogen sulfide gas is dissolved in the well water and forms a weak acid called hydro sulfurous acid which doesn't sound like a good thing to be spraying on plants. Bleach kills the sulphur reducing bacteria so I poured eight gallons into the well a couple weeks ago after pumping the well down to almost the intake. I also turned the pump on and washed down the sides of the well. I've just been letting the well sit - I don't want to pump chlorine onto the plants either. Enough time has gone by that the chlorine is diluted enough so I'll soon see if I've improved the water enough for the bamboo to like it, or not.

I'll eventually get the well water tested but I know from hydrology and water quality tests available on-line which address the particular aquifer I'm drawing from, that my well water is quite high in iron, manganese, and TDS. Also perhaps MTBE which has apparently invaded most of the underground water in much of the lower 48. It's no wonder despite all the billons spent on curing cancer we never quite get there - might have something to do with our MTBE intake.

If anyone has experienced any negative reactions by plants to well water I'd appreciate comments.

Thanks,

Mike
 

LLigetfa

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Well diggers are a thing of the past, from when laborours went down the hole with pick and shovel to dig. These days it is mostly done from the surface using mechanized equipment hence they are now called well drillers.
 

LLigetfa

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If anyone has experienced any negative reactions by plants to well water I'd appreciate comments.
Plants don't like really hard water. Water is a solvent and as such carries nutrient to the plant. If the water is heavily laden (hard) then it has less nutrient carrying capacity. While the by-products of IRB/SRB are not desirable, neither is the dissolved iron and manganese plus everything else. Have you tested the soil salinity? Heavy irrigation can raise it.

I aerate my well water and then run it through a Patterson iron filter before using it to water plants. The water is still hard albeit not as bad as untreated. It keeps the plants alive but not as good as the rainwater I collect.
 

MikeSS

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Well diggers are a thing of the past, from when laborours went down the hole with pick and shovel to dig. These days it is mostly done from the surface using mechanized equipment hence they are now called well drillers.

Thanks. Digging wells with hand labor is still widely done in Africa and other remote areas of the world where labor is cheap and machinery unavailable or unaffordable. Looking into it just now I'm finding it is not that uncommon here in the U.S. to dig a well by hand or back hoe. These days the people who die in wells from H2S are mainly people who go down old wells already dug but back when all wells were dug instead of drilled, H2S killed a lot of diggers. Miners too, although they were generally more aware of the danger than well diggers.

I was amazed to discover when looking into hand-dug wells that there is one in the UK (Woodingdean well) 1285 feet deep, 4-6 feet in diameter and took four years to dig.

http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__6948.aspx
 

MikeSS

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Plants don't like really hard water. Water is a solvent and as such carries nutrient to the plant. If the water is heavily laden (hard) then it has less nutrient carrying capacity. While the by-products of IRB/SRB are not desirable, neither is the dissolved iron and manganese plus everything else. Have you tested the soil salinity? Heavy irrigation can raise it.

I aerate my well water and then run it through a Patterson iron filter before using it to water plants. The water is still hard albeit not as bad as untreated. It keeps the plants alive but not as good as the rainwater I collect.

Thanks. That's really useful information. I'll look into the Patterson iron filter and also start thinking about ways to aerate. Adding a secondary pump to increase pressure and spraying the water high into the air before it falls down on the vegetation might be a good idea - still wouldn't help with the TDS problem. Yes, rainwater is magical. I wish we had some.
 

LLigetfa

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I would avoid spraying the foliage with really hard water and go more with a drip and/or soaker hose system.
 

Reach4

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I wonder if your neighbors consider the bamboo an invasive weed.
 

MikeSS

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I would avoid spraying the foliage with really hard water and go more with a drip and/or soaker hose system.

I agree with that. I noticed that spraying the bamboo leaves accelerated the damage and so have been aiming the water around the bases of the plants & trees once I noticed how the water was affecting the bamboo and some of the other vegetation. Some don't mind the water, such as Magnolia trees and the agave/aloe types. I've got a number of other trees which also don't mind the well water but the bamboo really doesn't like it.
 

MikeSS

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I wonder if your neighbors consider the bamboo an invasive weed.
Since we've gone several years without much rain the bamboo is doing all it can just to hold its own, nevermind invading anywhere. It does provide a great natural privacy screen along property lines so neighbors usually appreciate it.
 
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