Indoor plants are almost all tropical and adapted to grow under 3 canopies of treetops. They work in our house because the tiny bit of sun coming in the window is good enough.
Being tropical, they need a fair bit of water and the chemicals in tap water are often too much. I use rainwater, but you can set your pitcher out for 24-hours and get good results.
The stuff you see growing in cracks outdoors is almost certainly local and adapted.
I live in a city that has one of the cleanest water in the world. And I remember people leaving water out for a while before watering plants. I also remember ppl just watering immediately, and the plants seemed fine.
Didn't find anything conclusive as to why it matters in the 5 min of googling, other then clorine that seems to not be used much anymore. Hmm, a mistery.
My tap water noticeably stunts the growth of my plants (and probably contributed to some plant deaths). It could be because my tap water is alkaline (and all soil around here is also alkaline), or contains fluoride and chlorine. Chlorine is toxic to plants and the bacteria and fungus in the soil that plants rely on. A lot of water treatment plants are switching to chloramines, which you cannot off-gas by leaving water sit out, and are probably worse for plants because they take longer to degrade.
I wish I could collect rain water here but we get acid rain from living near a city and next to the Mississippi
Choose plants that are native to your region. You will be surprised how well they do.
It's the roots.
And the wind or lack thereof.
I always find this to be crazy with grass. It is so damn difficult to grow a nice lawn but grass randomly grows out of rocks in the woods.
I’m sure you have just as much nice grass as that woods does. It’s just spread out (like in the woods) between the not so nice stuff because grass sucks and isn’t meant to exist, much less grow as a constantly-pruned monoculture, in most of the areas it’s used :)
I try to keep my lawn on the brink of grass death because grass is a worthless spoiled brat, constantly demanding resources to look remotely ok (and so I don’t have to mow it). The clover and violet I planted in it makes it look green with zero effort, though, so the city doesn’t get on my ass about it.
You could try sowing grass native to your area. Or, better yet, kill your lawn: https://piped.video/watch?v=xYdLfkJcfok
The same species of grass?
Lawn grass isn't native, for one thing.
Tbf, there's also philodendrons. That's basically potted kudzu. I think if you took a potted one and threw it out during the winter, it'd just grow right back in. Probably need goats or sheep or napalm to actually kill one. Or maybe be colorblind so you don't see it turning yellow when it needs water.
People certainly are polishing this meme to a high sheen. Anyway, tell it to the pothos ivy.
This should make us all very very afraid of what that water is doing to US!
(Especially if/when it is colored - last year my water became orange and started giving everyone I knew that drank it mouth soreness, I only wish I was kidding, and ofc it was traced to a corporation found illegally dumping toxic chemicals into the water reclamation systems, thus exposing the entire city to those effects. No, they never faced any legal consequences beyond the slightest slap on the wrist iirc, why would they? That is what finally tipped the scales and helped me realize: the USA is not a first-world nation anymore.)
The tap water killing plants is more commonly the chemicals put in it intentionally to keep it clean/stop us from getting sick and fluoride to keep our mouths cleaner
Only if you like more mundane (yet accurate) explanations:-P.
Don't let me tell you how to live your life, but if my water turns orange I'm not drinking it.
I mean, not directly no - we boiled it first - but you gotta drink something, sometime.
What worried me more is not when the screw-up is so easily detectable, but when it goes unnoticed, like the permanent damage done to the residents of Flint, MI, or all those toxic chemicals caused by the multiple train derailments, where the company men tried to pay/threaten/whatever people to say that they were not sick.
Company profits >>>>
human health & safety.
Yeah, I don't trust the infrastructure around me very much. I get multiple boil notices a year, and the last water quality report said I had a "safe" level of uranium in my water. I just run all the water I drink and cook with through a Zero pitcher filter now. Not sure if it filters out uranium though, lol.
I don't understand why my tomato plant doesn't do well indoors with a grow light.
Because it’s indoors. With a grow light.
"I don't understand why I'm not feeling well by never leaving my apartment and only talking to people via text and ordering delivery for food."
A plant is a living organism, and giving it just the bare minimum doesn't ensure it'll do well at all.
I just left dirt in a pot after planting cherry tomatoes and parsley on my balcony, it magically grew flat parsley like crazy. I didn't even tend to it for a long time, still grows like a madman.
@The_Picard_Maneuver joke's on you (or them). I always water them with tap water.
well the chlorine in tap water is pretty bad for plants...
seems like yall have some horrible tap water
No, dracaena species in particular are sensitive to minerals and fluoride in tap water. I water my dracaena with bleach sterilized rainwater (after a livingroom-wide leaf spot outbreak a couple years ago). They're just fussy.
Much like humans
Plants outdoors don’t get water with nearly the amount of shit in it that tap water has.
Yes, even in Scotland.
