Yes the I’ve read our hard water, alakaline and mineral heavy water causes leaf burn. I pay $1 for 5 gallons so I don’t really mind if it keeps the tree looking healthy year round, I only water it like this during the summer when we don’t have rain.

I have 0 experience growing JM, so take this for what it's worth. But I have looked at using distilled water quite a bit for some of my own trees. My initial concern was my hard water (Phoenix has very hard water) had enough TDS in it to make it hard for my heat stressed trees to easily absorb sufficient water in the hot summer months. I tried distilled water once and got a favorable response, so I assumed that to be the case.

In hindsight, I don't think that was the problem at all. Municipal water should be fine for most cases (and adding vinegar can help if pH is the issue, as gardengal recommended).

But, if you do want to proceed with using distilled water, the main concern with that is it is missing some important minerals that will need to be supplemented, particularly if you are using it for potted trees which won't have access to those minerals in soil. Foliage Pro is wonderful because it contains the essential micro and macro nutrients. So I would definitely continue to use that with most waterings, especially if you are using distilled water. They recommend 1/4 dose if you use it with each watering, which helps prevent your tree from getting nutrient overload. As long as you flush it periodically, you shouldn't have an issue with salt build-up. Also, the distilled water will have far fewer dissolved solids so I think the threshold for root burn will actually be higher than if you were using "regular" water.

Thank you gardengal and Travis for

your feedback, I’m very new to this so it’s a bit hard to understand it all. Does adding Vinegar help with all the heavy minerals, Salts, etc?

My initial concern with distilled water was like you mentioned Travis, the lack of the necessary minerals, are your trees doing well with the garden water? Does the Foliage Pro add the necessary nutrients it’s missing with distilled water?

I’ve thought of maybe using a mixture of both distilled and regular water.

This is the way I understand it, and I invite any feedback from folks who know more than me: The water contains all sorts of "dissolved solids," which are the minerals etc. When the water evaporates, it leaves those dissolved solids behind, which results in the "salt build-up." The more dissolved solids in the water, the harder it is for the roots to absorb the water, which is why we limit how much liquid fertilizer we add to the water. You add too much and the water and fertilizer are unable to be absorbed by the roots, the solids are left behind when the water evaporates and they build up in the soil/mix.

Vinegar will adjust the water's pH level (makes it more acidic), which helps alkaline water (& any mixed in fertilizer) get absorbed by the roots better. It will not remove the minerals (or dissolved solids) from your water.

I found that my problem was actually my watering schedule--I thought my roots weren't getting enough nutrients and water, which was true, but it was because I was overwatering, not because the hard water was "too hard" for my trees. I cannot get 5 G of distilled water for $1, so I switched back to water from the spigot after I discovered my watering schedule problems. Trees have been fine with that.

If you do decide to continue with the distilled water because it's affordable, then Foliage Pro should contain the necessary nutrients. It's probably not designed to be mixed with pure distilled water, so you may find that you need to overdose a little to make up for the lack of baseline minerals. Then again, I'm not sure how heavy feeders Japanese Maples are. They may be fairly forgiving.

Thanks again Travis, great info. I want to stick to distilled for now. Maybe I’ll do a mixture to make up for the lost minerals, I’ll add the 1/4 dose of Foliage Pro, it looks to have the Osmocote in the soil or at least that’s what it looks like, I still have it in the same pot it came in. Still debating if I should use the Pro-Tekt every watering.