If you live in a climate that is not prone to lots of droughts or you are a gardener with 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 strict and this does affect 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 just find ways to
cope with less water. There are many ways to optimize your garden to conserve water while still keeping it beautiful. (photo courtesy: wikipedia)

Some of the ways you can try to conserve water 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 preventive measures.

If you watch your local weather forecasts, you will know that a drought will be predicted far in advanced. You will also be informed on the areas already experiencing a drought and when to expect some heavy rain. If you know in advance that heavy rain is heading your way, plan on setting up several rain barrels. Some 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. By the way, you can get some very pretty painted barrels at the stores. (photo courtesy: kentuckybarrels.com)

Finding the barrels will probably be the hardest part. You can use your own garbage cans or visit your home improvement store and get a few 55 gallon plastic drums. Before you go running to the store, keep in mind that these drums or garbage cans are big and bulky so figure out how you will bring them home. I usually borrow a neighbor’s truck to get them home. You will probably want to cover the top of the barrel with a screen to filter out any unwanted leaves or debris that might fall off the roof of your home.

Once you have your barrels ready, you are faced with the decision of where to place them. Usually during rainfall, there is one corner of the house that rain tends to pour off heavily. 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. While this might be the easiest way, you won’t see very high volumes of rain in the barrels. But, if you tweak your gutters in the roof of your home and remove each individual segment and place them at slant, all the rain water will be diverted to the nearest corner of the house. Once done, place a rain barrel at each corner to catch all the rain water. Believe me you will have plenty of rain water to use in your flower gardens. (photo courtesy: sbprojectcleanwater.org)

Some people may think that the use of water barrels is an antiquated idea and that is not true. Maybe these people don’t live in a drought prone area and with lots of watering restrictions. I have been doing this for years and know for a fact that those barrels of rain water have been put to use in my gardens and I am saving money in the long run.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Flower Gardening, Rain Barrels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.