Grey Water for Fruit Bushes and Trees

Hi all

I've read in more than one place that grey water (eg waste water from washing up, bathroom etc) can be used for fruit trees and bushes, but not on veg - as it's not good to have the bacteria in direct contact with the veg, but with trees and bushes this doesn't happen.

However, I read today on a website, that I should not even use grey water on fruit trees/bushes.

Please can someone tell me if this is right? If so, it's a right pain as I've just planted 5 fruit trees in my garden, planning to water them with grey water.

Cheers all,
Alexei

PS I posted this in edible gardening too, but thought it fitted better in this thread.

 

I've just been looking around the web for info on this, and haven't found anything yet directly relating to fruit bushes or veg, but the general info out there is that grey water is ok as a short term measure, but long term you need to treat it. This is a link to the RHS advice about watering wisely, which includes that info on page 5 or 6 - can't quite make it out....)

http://www.rhs.org.uk/learning/research/gardeningmatters/documents/WaterinGarden.pdf

There is advice from the Australian gardening advice

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1366316.htm

which seemed a good thing - but they clearly need to involve treatment of the water as there is a constant need for it, so it's not as useful as I thought it would be. A useful read though.....

The RHS advice says amongst other things that the compost and soil filters out the impurities quite adequately short term, so I would have thought it was ok...... but on the whole I'd go for rainwater from a butt if possible.

 

thanks very much indeed dendrobium - will check it out now...

 

The Aussie one says this:

"Grey water can also contain disease causing germs, so don't put it on vegies or ground dwelling herbs. Fruit trees are fine, provided there is no direct contact between the grey water and the fruit."

So that should be ok then. We're going to get Ecover soap and detergents, so we should be ok...

 

Going for advic on this subject to an Australian site seems to make sense, since they must have experience of drought conditions much more than we do.

We don't have hose-pipe bans up here, bt we still ah several rain-butts, since it seems stupid to let it all drain away..... We have a lot roof, with the house, large garage, and two greenhouses, so quite a catchment area :D

 

nice...I'm going to start on a water butt or two myself...

 

Hopefully in the future new houses will have grey water filtration and storage systems; fluff and hair seem to be one of the main problems.
As for Wiltshire we have so much rain that water butts are a much easier option- again new houses should have rainwater collection and storage tanks.

 

I totally agree with that Liz. There's just one problem I can think of - modern houses have pocket-handkerchief-size gardens - will there be room? And if you do, will there be any garden left to use it?

 

they could use the saved water for flushing the loo, washing the car etc....

 

True! :D