I was asked a while ago to review a new innovation for plant watering, needless to say since I received the purerain handheld gun it has rained. However the other week the temperatures briefly warmed up and I gave it a whirl.
The concept behind the innovation is to aerate tap water. Why? I hear you ask do I want to do this. Rain water contains oxygen, apparently gathered as th raindrops fall through the air and this helps the plants to extract nutrients more effectively. Plants are dependant on air and water in their cells to help them work. In fact only this week I was reading a magazine article where the author, Bob Flowerdew, commented that watering pots with tap water wasn’t as good as rain water as it contained less air. However, whilst many of us have water butts during a dry spell these often don’t have sufficient capacity to fulfill all our needs and if you are like me you tend to connect the hose to the outside tap through habit.
The way that the purerain system aerates the water is by colliding the fast moving water against a curved surface. This works in the same way as a weir or waterfall aerates a river. After the water has been aerated it then moves forward and out of the holes at the front of the Gun. Due to all the mains pressure being lost on impact the water doesn’t leave the gun with as much power as it would with a normal gun so you need to be close to the plants you are watering. There is an option with a long handle which I would recommend if you, like me, tend to use the hose to water plants that are difficult to reach such as hanging baskets and the back of the border. I have to admit to being somewhat sceptical about how much air you can generate in this way. However, when we tried it out the other weekend it was quite amazing how frothy the water was and clear that it was very oxygenated.
I haven’t done any trials to see if the oxygenated water promotes better growth or not but the manufacturers claim that leafy plants will grow up to 30% larger plus because they are taking up nutrients better there is less need for fertilisers and pesticides.
I think that if you are someone who likes a gizmo and do a lot of watering using tap water then this would be worth looking at. The prices are reasonable and you can locate a stockist through the purerain website www.PureRain.co.uk
