I am almost out of the water we stored in reused gallon jugs last year when we emptied our rain barrel for the season. Since I don’t want to start using tap water if I can help it, naturally I’ve been wondering when we put it out last year, and it was indeed in April, though I didn’t actually get it set up until the 25th. This is our third year collecting rainwater to use on plantings.
This year we are building platforms under them so we don’t have to stoop as much when we fill our watering can. I have all the materials, I just need to get building. I figure if we get some of the rain predicted this week, I might get at least one done.
The other thing we’re going to do different this year is move where the downspout is located on the front yard gutter which means we’d put that barrel on the other front corner of the house. The reason for this is twofold:
- The barrel would be too close to the walkway we’re putting in near the driveway, so any erosion will be a rain barrel waiting to tip over and possibly break the barrel, as well as…
- Because of the rain garden we’ll finally start installing this year, we want it away from where our water and sewer pipes run on the property so the mature spread of the roots for any plantings we install will be far enough away that they will not interfere with those pipes. Having the front barrel on the west side will also require less overflow piping for the water to reach the rain garden.
The night time temperatures are still hovering around freezing, so it could be too soon to put it out just yet. I hope I won’t run out of last year’s water before we get one platform built and change out the downspout location to put the barrel in its new permanent spot. I’m not confident though, especially given how many new seedlings we keep adding by the day. I’d need to have all this done by next week, I think. We’ll see how it goes.
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