Q. I have a master gardener type question. In an effort to save water here in our Opal Cliff Drive home (we are part of Soquel Creek Water District, very hard water), we have to have a water softener which helps a lot. People keep on talking about using your water inside to water plants etc. I’ve always been told that soft water cannot be used for watering plants, lawns etc.

Also, we asked a water storage person who puts together rain catchment systems and were told you have to have a certain amount of space for the canisters, piping etc.. Our tiny tiny beach area yard has little space and can’t do that.

The other day in the San Jose Mercury/News the profiled a woman who is in the water business who says no space is needed and you can use soft water on your plants, that it is the best. I don’t want to kill my plants. I think everyone has different situations and so far we’ve been able to conserve our water usage by almost 25%, lost all we can do.

So you can see the concern.

March 2014

A. I asked Golden Love, a friend who installs gray water system, for an expert opinion. He wrote “When setting up gray water systems, we ask people to change their water softeners to citrus based model. Sodium used in the softeners is harmful to soil and plant life.”

Here is a link to his website, Love’s Gardens.