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water Is water with high levels of Copper Bad for Chile's

My Family Garden is irrigated with well water. The water contains a lot of copper, as in spite of a filtration system, sinks and shower floors are being stained blue from copper. Is this high copper content, good bad, or irrelevant to my Chile's?
 
My Family Garden is irrigated with well water. The water contains a lot of copper, as in spite of a filtration system, sinks and shower floors are being stained blue from copper. Is this high copper content, good bad, or indifferent to my Chile's?
LOL only one way to find out! One this is for damn sure, you won't have any bacterial or fungal issues! LOL :)
 
My Family Garden is irrigated with well water. The water contains a lot of copper, as in spite of a filtration system, sinks and shower floors are being stained blue from copper. Is this high copper content, good bad, or irrelevant to my Chile's?

Copper is essential for many plant functions. Some of them are
•It functions as a catalyst in photosynthesis and respiration.
•It is a constituent of several enzyme systems involved in building and converting amino acids to proteins.
•Copper is important in carbohydrate and protein metabolism.
•It is important to the formation of lignin in plant cell walls which contributes to the structural strength of the cells, and the plant.
•Copper also affects the flavor, the storageability, and the sugar content of fruits.

Check this out you dont get to read the whole article without paying but you get the idea High copper levels in the medium improves shoot bud differentiation and elongation from the cultured cotyledons of Capsicum annuum L.
 
A quick google search provides a lot of articles about problems that excess copper can cause, e.g.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1677-04202005000100012

ABSTRACT

"Copper is an essential metal for normal plant growth and development, although it is also potentially toxic. Copper participates in numerous physiological processes and is an essential cofactor for many metalloproteins, however, problems arise when excess copper is present in cells. Excess copper inhibits plant growth and impairs important cellular processes (i.e., photosynthetic electron transport). Since copper is both an essential cofactor and a toxic element, involving a complex network of metal trafficking pathways, different strategies have evolved in plants to appropriately regulate its homeostasis as a function of the environmental copper level. Such strategies must prevent accumulation of the metal in the freely reactive form (metal detoxification pathways) and ensure proper delivery of this element to target metalloproteins. The mechanisms involved in the acquisition of this essential micronutrient have not been clearly defined although a number of genes have recently been identified which encode potential copper transporters. This review gives a briefly overview of the current understanding of the more important features concerning copper toxicity and tolerance in plants, and brings information of recent findings on copper trafficking including copper detoxification factors, copper transporters and copper chaperones."

Sounds like it could be a problems.
 
Normal grasses and flowers are fine. We wll find out about the other vegetables soon. This is the first season I have had the copper issue.
 
I'd say if it's still staining your shower and sink it's likely a bit too high. That sounds like quite a lot of copper content.
 
We just found the source of the problem. The last contractors that worked on the house neglected to ground some pipes, causing the copper pipes to leach copper into the water. The pipes have been grounded and there is far less blue water. There is still a little, which will take a while to completely dissipate.
 
Time to bump my thread in the interest of science:

I transplanted my chiles into the garden in late may, and also planted other vegetables. The garden was irrigated will well water very high in copper for around 6 weeks. This did not cause any issues. In fact, I had my best pepper season yet, producing more pods than ever before. Also, the cucumbers and other vegetables grew well. To answer my question, high levels of copper is not bad for chiles!
 
As with many common things in life too little or too much will cause issues. In your case if this is your drinking water beware that high levels of copper over the long term is linked to kidney disease and liver failure among others. Unless its naturally in your aquifer there is no reason your copper plumbing should be offing enough copper to turn your shower green or blue

Your friendly health tip from ixii!
 
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