04/17/2026
With most of Florida in drought, and the days growing hotter, I'm sure you're concerned about having enough water for native carnivorous plants such as Sarracena, Drosera, Dionaea, Pinguicula, and Utricularia.
I collect rainwater from the roof of my 36' x 36' barn (a rain barrel on each side). Even a small rain shower of 0.1" will fill both barrels.
I keep a sheet of shadecloth stretched over the top of the rain barrels; this helps to screen out leaves and other debris that blow into the gutters, and keep mosquitoes out.
I have 5 more barrels in my greenhouse. The primary purpose of these barrels is to store rainwater.
To move rainwater from the barn rain barrels, I use a sump pump and a couple of garden hoses. Once the water is mostly pumped out, I leave enough water to cool the pump. After it's cooled, I put it in an empty bucket in my barn. This is the second sump pump I've used in the last 15 years or so.
To transfer water from the storage barrel to my plants, I use a small, inexpensive submersible aquarium pump to push water through a hose. I listen while watering, and try not to let that little pump run dry because that limits its life.
Why use rainwater? Native carnivorous plants are very sensitive to mineral salts. The first thing most people think of when hearing salt is sodium chloride NaCL, or common table salt. It is of course toxic to plants, but so also are the mineral salts calcium carbonate CaCO3, dolomite CaMg(CO3)2, and other mineral salts.
CaCO3 and CaMg(CO3)2 are mineral salts that commonly occur in Florida drinking water. If your drinking water source is hard, it's probably moderate to high in one or more of those mineral salts. These types of mineral salts cannot be easily filtered out. A water softener will do this, but it uses sodium to replace calcium and magnesium, so the resulting water is high in sodium that is not suitable for use with carnivorous plants.
The only options are to use water from reverse osmosis (RO), deionized (DI), distilled water, or rainfall, unless, you are very very lucky and your drinking water is very soft.
We can test our drinking water by using an instrument that measures total dissolved solids (TDS). The photo shows a TDS tester I bought on eBay for under $10.
The goal is to use water that has a TDS level of no more than 50 ppm (parts per million). In dire times for rainfall like we are now, 80 ppm may be okay for a short time.
I tested my well water this morning and it currently has 96 ppm TDS. If I am getting low on stored rainwater, I will dilute a barrel of rainwater 50/50 with my well water. I'll use the TDS meter to make sure the well water is sufficiently diluted before I put that water on my plants.
I hope this drought breaks soon, and good luck to you all.
