Can't Get Enough Rain Barrels!

Hi.  My name is Mimi, and I'm addicted to Rain Barrels.  LOL.  I say this because last year we bought  2 rain barrels that I loved, loved, loved.  I wished for rain, and did a rain dance every time it did.  Hahaha.  I loved the rain barrels so much that we couldn't resist buying another one this year!  The hubs parents saw this one at Sam's Club and picked it up for us.  It's an awesome rain barrel for an awesome price, $70!  Which is $10 less than what we spent on our other rain barrels.  The money that we have spent for rain barrels has more than paid for itself in the savings on our water bill.  It's astounding, and you really can't beat free water!

The best feature of this rain barrel is that the top has this basin that allows you to plant in.  I cannot wait to plant flowers and ivy in here, it is going to be so pretty!

As if 3 rain barrels weren't enough (it isn't), yesterday, I saw on Flatbush Gardener's blog a post about upcoming events in Brooklyn and the other boroughs. One event in particular that really made me super happy was that New York City's Department of Environmental Protection is giving away free rain barrels this year as they had done in previous years.  I'm so excited that the city has taken a proactive interest in conserving rain water. Totally cool. But it's not just a conservation effort, it's also the city's way to help manage the stormwater runoff from buildings, which can overwhelm the city’s sewer system. When there is a heavy rainstorm, the runoff of water overflows the sewer system, and in Staten Island, this causes a lot of basement floods because of backflow.  We had this problem the first winter we moved into our house, our basement flooded because of 3 days of non-stop rain.  If you live in NYC and want to know the locations for the rain barrel giveaways, check out the NYC DEP website.  The only thing that bums me out is that we just bought this rain barrel, I wish we knew about this free giveaway earlier, I would have waited for a free one.  But, who says we can't add 4 rain barrels to our yard?  Hahahaha.  If you go to the one in Staten Island, maybe I'll see you there!

How to water the garden with rain barrel water.

I'm almost embarrassed to show this photo. We have 2 rain barrels, and currently we don't have one of those neat pumps that you attach to the spigot to pump out the water. With rain barrels, unfortunately, gravity has to be your best friend. That's how the water comes out of the barrel, or you buy a pricey barrel pump. I've been eyeing the one at Clean Air Gardening, they have a battery operated pump for $49.99. You attach the pump to a garden hose, and voila, enough water pressure to empty out the barrel to water your plants.

I have to save my pennies to buy this pump, since we've already overspent on the garden this year. We easily spent over $1,000 on start up costs. Hey, a picket fence for a 25x25 lot is not cheap! So for now, this is how I water the plants with water from the rain barrel. I fill up these Arizona bottles and this bucket and wheelbarrow it over to the garden. The garden is a good 160 feet away from the house and rain barrels. I swear my neighbors think we are weird, but I can't pass up free rain water! Since we pay so much for tap water!
For those of you who have rain barrels, how do you water your plants? Do you empty it into a watering can? Use a hose. Use a pump?

Finally, storm clouds!

This past Sunday, we finally got some much needed rain. These storm clouds was a sight for sore eyes! It hasn't rained in weeks, at least not in Staten Island. Our friends in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens boasted about summer showers, but it never seemed to be over Staten Island. A conspiracy I tell ya! We were hoping for a good drenching but we did not get as much rain as I would have liked, it only rained for 30 minutes, but enough to mostly fill our rain barrels. Full rain barrels waters our garden for 3 WHOLE DAYs. Yee haw! Despite the fact that we've had very little rain this month, we have collected for the year so far, 530 gallons of water!!
We don't have the rain barrels side by side like in this photo anymore. We moved the other rain barrel to the back of the house to catch the rain from the back gutters. We've been trying to conserve water as much as possible. When we received our first water / sewer bill from the city, we were shocked to find out that for 6 months we were paying over $600! We were shocked to see that we were using over 300 gallons of water a day? Could this be right? How could this be? We factored in that a lot of it must be the fact that we were watering the garden with the hose. This is because it hasn't rained much. Wow, waste of water! So we thought of ways we could conserve water and save money. In addition to purchasing the rain barrels, we invested in a new shower head. We bought an eco-friendly WaterPik shower head that has a slower trickle of water. The water comes out at a lower pressure. It took a while to get used to but it helped to know that this was going to conserve water and save us money, and help the environment. Water is precious, and shouldn't be wasted!

We recently got our new quarterly water bill, and we are happy to report that with the rain barrels and the new shower head, we managed to cut our water consumption in half! We now use only 165 gallons of water a day. Woo hoo! Conserving rocks! And even better, our water bill was cut in half! Instead of $300 for 3 months, the bill was $160! Going green is saving green!

Rain, Sweet Rain!

The sky finally opened up and rained. We had a good thunderstorm this evening. I love it when it rains, so the garden can get a good soaking. However, I don't particularly like it when it is a torrential downpour, it pelts the poor little transplanted seedlings, and crushes them. Hopefully in the morning, everything survived. The good news is both of our rain barrels are full now! We have collected in the barrels 95 gallons of rain water for the plants! This should last us 1 week of watering plants! Yahoo! So far this year, we have collected 269 gallons of water! It's so amazing! I love conserving and collecting water for the garden, it's addictive. The rain barrels fill up so fast, we're thinking we need at least 4 more barrels!!
If you are wondering what our rain barrel looks like, see this post here.