Photo courtesy of Paki Nuttah at Flickr.com.

If you live in an area that gets substantial amounts of snow in the winter, treat your houseplants to some melted snow every once in a while.

Experiments at the Siberian Botanical Garden have revealed that veggies watered with snow melt grow twice as fast as those fed regular water. Similarly, a recent NASA study revealed that snow melt triggers huge aquatic plant blooms in the ocean. It seems that snow contains about 40% fewer water molecules with a heavier-than-normal form of hydrogen called deuterium than normal water does.

For reasons having to do with the way that plants take up water molecules, this “heavy water” tends to slow down growth, while snow melt is easier on the plant. It all sounds like science fiction, but it’s a perfectly natural process that you can easily take advantage of.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 5:09 am and is filed under Gardening Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.