Fun with Rain barrels

I know that it is 20 degrees out and this is not the time of the year for outdoor gardening, but at a friend’s request I decided to share some ideas that I have for green outdoor living spaces.

I like to garden, particularly I like to grow my own vegetables and herbs.  This year, in on my path towards becoming more sustainable, I purchased a rain barrel.  This was an easy first step since the initial investment can be as little as 100 bucks for a decent rain barrel.  My vegetable garden was near my barrel so this worked out well for watering the plants when mother nature neglected to water them.

Getting it set up was quite a feat.  Since the location of the downspout was the same level as my plants, I had to build a platform in order create enough head pressure.   This worked out well for me since I built the platform to act as a storage center also.  All the trucks and other toys from my sons easily store under the rain  barrel now.  After a few month, however, I noticed a nice odor coming from the barrel.  The barrel that I purchased was a re-purposed wine barrel.  The vendor that sold these did not put a screen on it in order to filter the vegetative matter out though.  The screen also serves to block the mosquitoes from entering or exiting also.

Once I modify the entry into barrel with screen the smell and mosquitoes went away.

some of the benefits of a rain barrel:

• You can water your plants at any time of the day when there are watering restrictions regarding municipal water
• Water plants with municipal water is a waste of energy.  The amount of energy used to pump the water to your house will be saved if you use rain water collection.

If you are wanting to upgrade to an even larger system then you should consider a systern.  These tanks can hold enough water to water all of your plants is designed correctly.  One company that I have used here in the Atlanta Area is Raincatchers.