Re: Can distilled water be used to water mung bean seeds?

It depends what kind of growing system you use. 

If you use a purchased potting soil, the beans will probably grow well at 
first but soon become deficient in mineral nutrients because potting soils are 
designed to require frequent fertilizer applications. In this experiment, a 
control treatment would be bean plants in potting soil receiving a fertilizer 
solution (such as Miracle-Gro or Peters) instead of distilled water.

If you grow the beans in distilled water only with no solid medium
(hydroponics) then the beans will soon become stunted and will probably die. 
Distilled water lacks any of the 14 mineral nutrients plants require. In this 
experiment, a control treatment would be hydroponic bean plants with their 
roots in a complete mineral nutrient solution.

If you grew the bean plants outdoors in a fertile garden soil, the beans would 
grow very well with only distilled water. Rain water is often close to 
distilled water in purity in terms of the amounts of essential plant mineral 
nutrients it contains. Garden soils are also much more likely to contain 
nitrogen-fixing bacteria that form nodules on bean roots and provide the plant 
with much of its nitrogen.

References


Re: Which plants are best suited for hydroponics and why?>


Re: what are the chemicals in soil? What is nitrogen, sulfur , and phosphorus?



Re: are nutrients and minerals the same thing?