Rain Water for Gardening

When I don't teach, research, write, knit or refinish furniture, I garden. My house in Atlanta currently has a pomegranate tree, five fig trees, a persimmon tree, black raspberries, elderberries, black and red currants, sunflowers and seaberries all planted by me and my son. I also have a small patch of tomatoes and peppers that I replant every year.

All of this, plus my garden flowers, requires a lot of water. Water in Atlanta, especially during the drought season, is a precious commodity. In the literal sense, too: my water bills during the summer were huge. In the severe drought years, the city authorities ask the residents not to use drinking water for watering the plants and grass, so it breaks my heart to see the brown grass and whilted flowers until they get some rain.

So, in the summer of the pandemic I decided to build my own rain water collection system. I have found a seller on FB Marketplace who was selling the industrial grade plastic barrels and bought two of them. I think they had been used to transport Coca-Cola syrup because even now I when I open them to clean and winterize, I catch a wiff of Coke smell. I should have bought more barrels, but my Nissan Juke could only take two at a time and the seller couldn't wait for me to pick up more. Besides, I didn't know how well it would work. So I just got two. They cost me $35 each.

Then I bought a 2-pack DIY rain water collection system by EarthMinded on Amazon. It was cheaper then, I remember I paid about $60 for it. It came with the special bits for an electric drill to cut holes in the industrial-grade containers. I've used my drill to cut the holes in the barrels and gutters and installed the two barrels myself, on the platforms that I also built myself of stone blocks and a piece of wood I picked up at Lowe's. They now stand firmly, one on each side of the house in the back yard.

The barrels filled up to their 55-gallon capacity two days after installation, during a late May storm (we have big ones in Atlanta in May, with thunder and lightening). When they do fill up, the water gets diverted back into the gutter to prevent flooding around the barrel. Ever since I installed the barrels, I have yet to use drinking water for any of my plants. And they love the natural rain water, especially if I spruce it up with my compost tea (yes, I do compost too, trying to be as earth-minded as possible).

This is how one of the barrels looked right after I installed it in summer 2021. At the time, I connected a long water hose to it that I had used to water the re-sodded grass. I know, it doesn't look too aesthetic but it worked fine for the first year. The water barrel on the other side of the house is identical to this one.

This is how it looks now, after I have invested $18 into a spiral hose that takes a lot less space. Also, the thinner black hose is the new sprinkler system I installed for my tomatoes and peppers. I bought it for about $10 on FB Marketplace. It can be easily detached when I need to pour water into a bucket or use it for something else like wash my dirty shoes (I use the rain water for all sorts of technical purposes).

For the winter, I have to empty the barrels. Winters in Atlanta are not that cold as to freeze the water if it is left in the barrels, but it's still a good practice to winterize the barrels by emptying them, cleaning them inside of all the gunk they collect during the summer (I once found a little frog in one). I don't have enough space in my garage to store them, so I leave them in their places, just turn them upside down and don't close the lids.

This is my latest garden project: a new sprinkler system. I had to run it low to get good pressure from the rain barrel, and I have installed it precisely for each plant - five tomatoes and two peppers. It runs through the black raspberry patch as well, but since it does not need as much water, I can screw the sprinklers in or out to close or open the water for it. In this picture, only three red sprinklers are visible on the fence. I worked on the system for several days as it was too hot to do it all in one go. It's all finished since then.

That big black bin in the background next to the grill is the jewel of my backyard, the Envirocycle composter. I bought it about 10 years ago and it cost me $200 then. They sell it for almost $400 now, but they constantly improve the design. It's totally worth it as it is made of industrial-grade plastic as well and it has the best design: all you need to do is to fill it up with food scraps and browns and then rotate it on the pedestal at least once a day. The pedestal also serves as a compost tea collector that I dilute in water 1/10 to give my plants a good boost. It works wonders on them.

Ever since I started composting I feel great as I hardly ever throw away any food waste. I can make about four batches of compost every year that I use in the spring to plant my tomatoes, peppers and flowers. They all thrive in the compost. One year I screwed it up by adding magnolia leaves to it (you can read my heartbreaking story about my beautiful magnolia tree here). That was a hard lesson to learn.

I love my rain water barrels so much that I am thinking about buying two more, to install at the front of the house. My HOA has strict rules about how our front yards should look, so the crude DIY blue food barrels will not do. I will have to buy something more aesthetically pleasing like this barrel from EarthMinded. This is the only company that makes rain barrels that cut into the gutter rather than collect the water through a big hole on top - the design I am weary of with all the mosquitos and bugs we have in the south. But installing these better designed barrels will be the project for next year. As I had to re-sod the grass in the place where my magnolia used to be, my gardening budget is maxed out for this year.