Rain Barrels to Survive Droughts
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Rain Barrels to Survive Droughts
If you’re a gardener that has an unlimited supply of water, consider
yourself lucky.
There are many of us who live in drought zones where the garden and
lawn watering rules are very constrictive to the healthy growth of
gardens and plants. Many people just give up when they find out how few
gallons of water they are permitted to use, but some of us have just
found ways to cope with less water.
There are many ways to optimize ones garden to conserve water while
still keeping it lush.
Some of the ways include drip irrigation (the use of a pipe or hose
with small holes to gradually seep into the roots of the plant), the
placement of plants in groups of equal watering needs (to prevent
wasting water on plants that don’t need it), and using compost or mulch
to insulate the water and prevent drainage.
But one of the best ways to keep your garden alive during a drought is
to take preventative measures. Occasionally a drought will be predicted
far in advanced, or those already experiencing a drought will be given
a few weeks of heavy rain. When this occurs, you should take the
opportunity to set up several rain barrels.
Many people think this would be a time consuming, silly thing to do.
But it can save you many gallons of water, and hardly requires any work.
Finding the barrels will probably be the hardest part. You can use your
own garbage cans, or head to your home improvement store to get a few
55 gallon plastic drums.
These can be expensive and difficult to transport, so keep that in mind
before you go to the store. You will probably want to cover the top of
the barrel with a screen of some sort to filter out any unwanted leaves
or debris that might fall off the roof of your house.
Once you have your barrels ready, you’re faced with the decision of
where to place them. Usually during rainfall, there is one corner or
segment of the house that rain tends to pour off of. If you are taking
the simple approach to barrel placement, just place the barrel under
all the places where you see large amounts of drips.
However, while this might be the easiest way to place them, you won’t
see very high volumes of rain in the barrels.
If you want to take a more complicated approach to placing the barrels,
you should consider tweaking your gutter system a bit. If you remove
each individual segment and place it at a very slight slant so that all
the water is diverted to the nearest corner of the house, you can place
a rain barrel at each corner. So essentially your entire house acts as
a catcher for the rain, instead of just a few feet worth of shingles.
This is how to maximize the amount of water your rain barrel will catch.
After a heavy rainfall, each individual barrel probably won’t see very
much rain. If it looks like it won’t be raining more any time soon,
it’s a good idea to empty each barrel into one main central barrel.
Seal it and save it out of the way, for whenever you may need it. Then
the next time it starts to rain, you’ll be able to quickly put all your
catching barrels into place without having to lug around all the water
you’ve accumulated so far.
The use of water barrels might sound like an antiquated idea.
However,when you’re in the midst of a drought and you’re able to spare
that extra couple of gallons for your garden in addition the city
allotment, you’ll be grateful for every bit of time and money you spent
on collecting all that rain.
All it takes is a few trips out in the backyard every time it starts to
sprinkle, and you’ll be a very happy gardener when water isn’t so
abundant.
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