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Good day. My name is Nico, I live in Pretoria. I want to use my greywater from the bathroom, washing machine and kitchen sink directly onto my lawn and flower and fruit tree garden. My concern is that I will chace away the bugs like earthworms in the ground with the soapy water. I use mostly Unilever products. Is there specific products not to use?

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Aug 03, 2020
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Be careful of
by: Caroline

To protect organisms in your soil and garden avoid
1) bleach
2) ammonia
3) biocides (anything that 'kills all known germs' is going to kill all known soil life too)
Read your labels to make sure there is no bleach in your washing powder. There is often ammonia in the power cleaning fluids.

Aug 03, 2020
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Grey water and your garden ecosystem
by: Caroline

Hi Nico

You can breathe deep. I have a worm bin that catches all the liquid from my kitchen sink. It provides the worms with their only food. I've never seen happier worms to be honest. Actually it is the first 'filter' in my sequential gray water system, about which I wrote a book. You can see the book advertised in the right hand column on the website. You may need to read the book to see how I do it all.

If you are to worry about something with gray water it is that after a decade the Sodium in the sunlight liquid and other soaps will build up and make your soil saline and infertile. To prevent this I used to make my own potassium based soap, without any sodium. You can make it yourself or buy it from some small boutique producers, or get it online. Here is a url but they seem to be out of stock right now https://naturalyarns.co.za/shop/pure-simple-castille-liquid-soap-fragrance-free/ They call it liquid Castille soap. The big manufacturers also make some products which only use biodegradable enzymes. Unfortunately I don't know much about this as I cannot afford their products.

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