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What is a rain barrel good for?
8 July 2007With the rising cost of municipal water and watering restrictions becoming more common during the summer months many people are looking for new ways to keep their gardens watered and their lawns green. The rain barrel is fast becoming the best solution for rural and urban gardeners. Rainwater can help to improve the health of your gardens, lawns, and trees. Rain is a naturally soft water and devoid of minerals, chlorine, fluoride, and other chemicals. In fact Chlorine is used to rid water of bacteria and harmful biological organisms and it is many of those organism that make your gardens healthy and strong.
Water is not an infinite resource as many people believe. In many areas of North America demand for water is starting to outpace the rate at which mother nature can replenish the supply. Have you ever watched the amount of rain that comes down in your gutters during a heavy rain storm? Now imagine having that water available from your rain barrel for your garden during those 2 week long dry spells. When you do the math we are talking about significant amounts of water being saved every year. For every inch of rain that falls on a catchment area of 1,000 square feet, you can expect to collect approximately 600 gallons of rainwater!
Top 4 reasons why we decided to use rain barrels:
1 - Rain water is good for our garden. It is warm and chemical free.
2 - It saves us money
3 - We had a lot of fun trying out different building configurations using different barrel types.
4 - Good for the environment.
We will be adding as much information to this site as we can. If you have some interesting info about rainwater collection or rain barrels in general we would love to hear from you. If you have pictures or an interesting configuration we would love to post it on this site to share with everyone. Help us spread the word!
