Dry, Need H20 or $

kramarat, from me you get a GA and GI. (good idea.) Dunno why I didn't think of that. Must have been too many cold Xmas beers. Enjoy your new year.

If the Kramarat's experiment proves toothpaste harmful to your plants, you can always change your garden's flora for lion's tooth.

Yahlasit

tooth paste does have detergent (phosphate) and a small amount of bleaching agent in it.....(Teeth Whitener).

Can't see a problem

Thanks 911, maybe my plants will have whiter teeth!

Should be good for the Venus' fly traps!!!

Seriously though, a lot of toothpastes will have some form of fluorides (stannous fluoride?). Presumably a small perceentage so as not to kill the user, but still poisonous. I like the experiment suggested earlier. I think there is enough dilution to prevent a problem, but would be interested in the results of your experiment.

I don't know anything on this subject but you might do some google work on "gray water irrigation". I don't know if this term is USA specific or world wide, but waste water can be classified as "gray water" and "black water". I don't know where the terms come from, but in some areas it is legal to irrigate with gray water. I know that you don't care about US laws, but some Google work should give you information on the benefits, risks and issues to be aware of.

Let us know what you ended up doing.

Hi Bruce. thanks for your input. I will investigate further. Will let you guys know what I end up doing, but be patient, it may take a while. In the meantime, seeing that the mercury's rising, I gotta getta 'nather cold one. Cheers, and a happy new year to you.

Thanks for the links, the methods are doable. enjoy the new year.

Generally speaking, phosphates are good for your plants while surfactants are harmless in moderate amounts. Surfactants do raise water pH generally speaking, so this may affect plants requiring acidic soil conditions. Also, toothpastes do sometimes contain fluorides and calcium. The fluoride may be harmless in small amounts but the calcium may be harmful to plants that favor acidic soil. Find out what are the soil conditions that your plants require before doing this.

suggest you use drip irrigation for the root areas, and cover the non growth areas with black plastic and cover with white gravel. Make sure that there are holes in the plastic at low points so rain may penetrate. ore desert garden ideas here.

http://www.google.ca/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22desert+garden%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=%22desert+garden%22&gs_rfai=&psj=1&fp=2c0b2ef780091f9e

DV1, thank you too for you info, (my fingers are bleedin' from all this keypad work, but what the hell) I will ask my plants (beer # 7) whether they favor acidic soil. ( they say that talking to your plants is beneficial to them) Enjoy your new year.

How about pouring something with a ph into it .I dont know if you could start using baking soda on your teeth ,they offer different toothpastes.ds

What about the sodium lauryl sulfate in most toothpastes? It is a foaming agent and surfactant. I had to switch to a special toothpaste without it because it was causing ulcers in my mouth. Since I've switched, I no longer experience this problem. It must be pretty caustic stuff!

It's not unusual in the UK for bath water etc to be used for garden irrigation, not because of shortage but because we have to pay for what we use. As far as I know it is used without treatment.

Fluoride is the thing in toothpaste that is actually toxic in large amounts. It does accumulate in plant leaves as it does in animal bones. So if the plants being watered are intended for food, you might want to switch to a fluoride-free toothpaste.

There are also some types of plants that don't tolerate fluoride well, there's a list of them on this blog. The author also points out that adding calcium to the soil is a grower's trick, to bind the fluoride ions as calcium fluoride (aka "fluorite"CaF2), which is insoluble in water and will not be taken up by the plants. So a bit of calcium in the mix could be a good thing.

There's pH and other soil data from arid areas of Namibia in this paper here, for clues as to what's in your area or garden soil.

"I shower every AM and bath every PM"

WTF? how do get so much time? Stop the PM bath and you won't need to worry about all of these?

wouldn't the N & P from detergent a good fertilizer? Eutrophication, anyone? Or am I off the chart here?

spit it in to a can or plastic jar, like chewing tobaco and when it rains clean it out,

I grew up in North QLD, Austrlia; and being very dry and on water restrictions most of my life, we always re-routed the shower and washing machine to the back yard. We had a long flexible 2" pipe connected to the drain from the shower and laundry. Wherever the pipe was laid for the day had a nice green patch, the rest of the yard was the usual brown.

A few considerations though - we used corrugated black flexible hose. Very flexible, but at the expense of being corrugated. Shower water may seem like normal water, but it's called "grey water" for a reason - all the soap, body fat and belly-button lint builds up in the corrugations, and gets a bit of smell on over the years. If you can make do with a discharge tube that has a flat inner wall, this should help, but would still require semi-regular cleaning.

If of course you are draining into a tank for later pump-fed irrigation, you now have to filter the "grey" out of the "grey water", otherwise your pumps and tricklers will get blocked very quickly.

A shower AND a bath each day? What happened to your government issued (not-so-)highly accurate 3-minute shower timer? Huh?