How To Set Up Rain Barrel

Every bit Minnesota gardeners continue to adapt during the drought of 2022, it's natural to think about ways to conserve and reuse water for our gardens. Rain gardens are a great mode to continue water on your property. Another option is to collect rainwater from roofs using a rain barrel.

Why Get a Rain Barrel?

This wooden rain barrel blends with the way of the house and garden.

There are many benefits to collecting rainwater from your roof and storing information technology for afterwards utilise. Once the barrel is prepare, the water costs nil. The water is not chlorinated and has the pH of (duh) rain unlike water that comes from the hose and may take a college pH that is harder on plants. Information technology reduces your personal water consumption and also gives y'all a supply of water for gardens during city-imposed watering bans or restrictions. Information technology as well helps keep h2o away from your foundation by storing information technology in the barrel.

Besides the benefits for yous equally a gardener, information technology has many benefits for our lakes, streams and ecosystems. Collecting rainwater keeps information technology where information technology falls, preventing excess menses into storm sewers, lakes and rivers. Information technology also keeps pollutants from spreading into those natural resources.

Installation

Rain barrels are available from a diversity of hardware and garden suppliers. Y'all can also recycle a food-grade barrel to store rainwater. (See the video below from This Old Firm virtually how to install ane for about $40.) If you'd similar to make and install your own rain butt, our friends at Metro Blooms hold classes on this topic several times a twelvemonth.

To install the barrel, you will need a diverter on your downspouts to redirect the water to the butt. You will also need a spigot at the bottom of the barrel. It works all-time to put the barrel on a platform then it'due south a pes or so off the ground. This allows you to put a watering tin can under the spigot. You tin can besides add a hose to bring the water to your containers or gardens. The pelting butt will as well need some kind of overflow system for when it rains more than the barrel tin can concord.

Most barrels concord 55 to sixty gallons of water. This is large plenty to collect the rain from a 1 inch rainstorm draining a 100 foursquare foot area. (For more on calculations, check this website.) If you want to collect a lot of water for your garden, you can hook up multiple barrels or installing rain barrels on several downspouts.

What about Wintertime?

Rain barrels come up in a diverseness of designs from sleek to DIY.

You'll need to empty your rain barrel and re-direct water back to your downspout when wintertime comes. Many of the attachments people employ to claw in a rain butt accept a simple way to re-directly the downspout flow. In tardily fall, drain your barrel. Leave the spigot open then that water that may condense inside the barrel has a way to flow out. Brand sure the top of the barrel is covered and tight to prevent rodents from falling into the barrel.  You should also clean out any filters on the top of the barrel of leaves and other debris.

Tin You Use Pelting Barrel Water on Vegetable Gardens?

Because h2o in rain barrels is coming off of roofs, which may contain chemicals or fecal matter from birds and other critters, using rain barrel water on vegetable gardens is not 100 percent condom. The University of Minnesota Extension recommends you should NOT employ h2o from a rain butt on any office of a found that y'all may eat. And then, it would be fine to use rain barrel water to h2o the base of your tomato plants or to h2o a fruit tree at its roots. Just considering it is non tested for safety (different h2o from your hose), y'all should non apply rain barrel h2o on greens, strawberries or root crops. Of course, whether the water comes from a hose or a pelting barrel, yous should give all your vegetables a expert washing in a pan of cool water before eating.

Rain barrel h2o is the perfect solution, withal, for ornamental plants and trees, which badly need water now.

Source: https://northerngardener.org/rain-barrel/

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