- Why did we pick all these tomatoes when they are so green and so small?
Turn them over for an unpleasant surprise:
What we have here is blossom end rot. What a disappointment! After some research, and talking to other gardeners in my life (namely, Uncle Loren), I learned that this unfortunate condition occurs for mainly two reasons:
1). Uneven watering
2). Lack of calcium in the soil
After the kids and I properly mourned our first harvest of tomatoes (for we had watched them since they first began to bubble out from their blooms and had very high hopes!), I set out to learn how to enrich the soil with more calcium. I found a lot of advice online, including feeding the plants with bonemeal, bloodmeal, and even Tums! Which makes some sense, since they are made of calcium. Eyeing the Tums container in the cabinet and wanting a quick fix, I almost followed that advice, but I just couldn’t. It seems like logical advice, and perhaps we’ll try it if we need to later, but for now I felt like there was just too much at stake for experiments…we really really wanted to save our tomatoes! So, I resisted the urge to head out and stuff Tums into the ground, and instead waited until I had a chance to go to the gardening center (aka Lowe’s) down the street to look for something else.
Lowe’s has a nice little selection of organic plant feeds and sprays, which I find encouraging. Of course, the chemical selection is 4 or 5 times bigger, and the types of promises on those chemicals’ packages are quite enticing. Grow huge vegetables, eradicate any and all types of pests and diseases! I feel fortunate, however, that as a novice gardener, deciding to start out organically, I’ve never had a taste of the chemicals’ quick fixes and I don’t know what I’m missing. I am simply not interested in them.
Even in the organic section, looking at the labels carefully is important. I had my mind set on bloodmeal when I headed to Lowe’s, even though the name makes me shudder. I looked at a couple different brands, both of which boasted “cow-free” blood, which I thought strange, so I looked at the ingredients: 100% porcine. How is pig blood any better? And where was this pig blood coming from? I was feeling woozy at this point, and realizing I hadn’t armed myself with any of the arguments of what type of blood is better, or with any knowledge whatsover about using bloodmeal (does the blood come from CAFOs?), I looked for something entirely different. I realize the importance of bloodmeal and bonemeal to organic gardening (I have read about the use of these two morbid-sounding substances countless times in sources I fully trust), but at the moment I was feeling completely unprepared to make any decisions.
This package caught my eye (was it the giant tomato?):
The one and only ingredient? Well-composted chicken manure. Plenty of calcium, among other plant goodies like nitrogen and phosphate. In fact, the percentage of calcium in this plant food was higher than in the blood or bone meal. Score!
We fed the tomatoes by putting our fingers down into the soil around the roots to make small wells, putting a tablespoon full in each well (4 wells per plant), and smoothing it all back over. Then, of course, we gave the tomatoes a drink.
But what about that water? What is ‘uneven watering’? Have we been watering the tomatoes too much, or not enough? Since we had been giving the garden a drink every single day, my instincts told me perhaps we could try watering every other day.
Since we’ve implemented the new watering plan, and fed the plants, we’ve watched for healthy tomatoes every time we enter the garden. We still see this:
And we also see tomatoes with less severe rot:
AND! We have been finding beautiful tomatoes with absolutely no blemishes whatsoever!
I think we may have hope!
Now, I do want to mention something. We had been picking those black-bottom tomatoes as soon as we spotted them and tossing them into our compost bin. I felt like the plants would be wasting energy to continue growing a bad tomato. Lately, though, we leave them alone. For one thing, blossom end rot is not a disease that will effect any other tomato or the plant itself. It is a condition that effects only that particular tomato. The plant will potentially grow unblemished tomatoes simultaneously. For another thing, those tomatoes do not have to be wasted! Once they get large and ripe, the bottoms can be cut off, and the tops will be perfectly good. Since we want as many tomatoes as possible, we thought we’d let the tomatoes grow and see for ourselves if this is good advice.
Hopefully we’ll see some red, soon!
Tag: kids
Earthworms are an especially fascinating topic for every child. Picking them up out of the yard to hold them, watch them (and hopefully place them back on the ground with their life still in tact), is a popular activity around here!
This book will teach you a lot more about earthworms so that you can share the tidbits with your kids the next time you hold squiggling worm with them. It may even motivate you to build a worm composter. I know that project is now definitely on our growing list of gardening activities!
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A few surprises were in store for me as I read this lovely little book. Most of us know that earthworms play a crucial role in the fertility of our soil, but how many of us know that they can actually be quite destructive, too? Or that there are projects in which earthworms are helping to process our waste? Or that the world of earthworms actually holds more mystery than knowledge, for the simple fact that they can be so hard to study?
Amy Stewart drew me into her book with her obvious love of gardening. She describes her worm bin throughout the book with such endearment that I am convinced I must have one. Luckily, she provides plenty of resources for readers, who can choose either to make their own, or to buy a commercially made bin. The worm castings (aka poop) are wonderful for the garden, and as she says, worms can make the perfect pet. 😉
A little history on how our specific earthworms entered our country’s soil is included in the book, along with the disconcerting description of North American redwood forests that are dying due to the worms. Earthworms may have helped to create the fertile fields that our nation boasts, but they are also the cause of ancient forest land losing its important life cycles. This is the first time I’d heard about this crisis–and it’s good to know that groups of ecologists are working hard to find ways to minimize the effects of the earthworms in these endangered areas. But it brings up an important lesson for us, in that we are always humbled by nature’s forces; so much of what we put into action unwittingly changes those forces tremendously, with no turning back. One of the most important lessons for the average ‘worm consumer’? Never dump leftover worms on those wilderness fishing trips: the less help worms have in getting to wild areas that they are not native to, the better.
Even with the somber reminder that we need to minimize our effects on worm migration, there is so much good that comes from earthworms that it’s impossible not to get excited about the benefits in areas that thrive with their help.
One modern project that I find intriguing–yet gross: the use of earthworms (in a large scale vermiculture outfit) to help process raw sewage. Stewart visits a sewage plant in Florida that is working on getting worms to digest waste and turn it into something more pure and ‘palatable’ for farmers and gardeners to use as fertilizer. I won’t lie…the idea makes me squirm, as it does almost everyone. But the fact is, there is no good place for human sewage to go, and many would claim that with the help of the earthworms’ digestion, we could be making good use of it. Hmmmm…I may need a lot more convincing on this one. What about, on the other, more pleasant hand, installing large worm bins behind delis, restaurants–anywhere serving food, really–to turn the scraps into fertile worm castings? There would be a lot of work involved to keep it going properly (just sorting the garbage alone would take a full-time employee), but these kinds of innovations might help keep waste that could be turned into something very valuable from filling up the dwindling space in our landfills.
Without even considering the large-scale projects, it is fascinating to look at your own backyard for ideas. The author herself has given thought to having a ‘chicken tractor’–a concept I’ve read about before–to create superior growing soil for her garden. The idea is to move the chickens around each year. During any given year, whatever patch of land is beneath the chickens will become worm heaven. They will burrow up and down and devour the chicken manure, loosening the soil, filling it with nutritious castings. Each spring when the chicken tractor is moved, there is a perfect new garden bed, filled with worms who’ve tilled the soil from within and filled it with all the microbes plants want and need. Not to mention, the chickens will have their fill of worms!
One of the most endearing parts of Amy Stewart’s book is her repeated reference to Darwin, who studied worms in his last days. Darwin really helped shaped a lot of what we now know about earthworms, and Stewart’s tales of the old man with his worms–along with his persistent dedication to learning– are a nice touch.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the soil and gardening, but also for anyone who loves to ponder: ‘where exactly do we fit, as humans, into this whole picture?’ Oddly enough, the quiet power of the earthworm humbles us, especially when we realize the effect they’ve had on the planet for millions of years before we even existed.
If you need a good starting point in your quest to understand our food system and how it relates to everything else in our history and culture, this would be a good read for you.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Now here is a book that I would recommend as a ‘must-read’ for everyone. There are many excellent books that focus on our present food issues, but Michael Pollan has clarity and a straightforward personality that will reach all audiences. Pollan writes about the concerns we are all starting to have, but remains extremely real and grounded. He is someone who you could imagine hanging out and having a beer with. He isn’t going to look down his nose at you for eating a hamburger, or lecture you about the evils of the banana you are putting into your mouth. Instead, he’ll sip his beer and tell his fascinating stories of his own discoveries; the journeys he has embarked on to find answers to those gnawing questions we have about our food. He’ll make you think a little, and perhaps change your mind about some of the ways that you eat.
I have to admit, I’d been putting off reading any of Michael Pollan’s book for awhile. Maybe I felt there was too much hype about them and was afraid I’d be disappointed if they weren’t as good as everyone claimed. Or maybe I didn’t want to read the awful truths I knew he’d be revealing. Now I realize what I have been missing. Omnivore’s Dilemma gives a lot of detail about the bits and pieces I already have learned about our food system—that part I was expecting. What I wasn’t expecting was his humor … and his humanness. Unlike some others who write about food and our culture, he never once ‘talks down’ to the reader, nor does he seem to live an unrealistic, purist lifestyle. He simply takes a long, hard look at the ways we, as a species, eat, and puts into words all the things we wonder about as human beings when we really begin to contemplate our food. Most amazingly, he finally admits that with everything having been said, he might still once in a while happen to eat a McDonald’s hamburger. Even though, he says, he is losing his taste and appetite for industrial food, just like so many of us are.
I love the 4 parts of the book and their focus on different types of meals: The Industrial Food Chain, The Big Organic Food Chain, The Local and Sustainable Meal, and the Foraged/Gardened/Hunted Meal.
The history of our Industrial Food chain didn’t provide me any huge surprises, since I have read so much about it already, but the history of corn was nice. I was amused by Pollan’s viewpoint of corn’s success as a species, and how the plant itself is, evolutionarily speaking, the winner in the whole deal.
I have been a little suspicious of Big Organic for quite some time, so it’s nice to have an author address the issue. Yes, Pollan writes, it’s good to avoid pouring chemicals into our earth and water…but growing organic food on a big scale to meet the demands of a national market has huge drawbacks. The techniques of cultivating the land, bringing in compost/manure if it’s not made onsite, and storing and shipping the harvested food turns out to be just as fuel-burning as conventional food production. Pollan claims that going organic on a big scale is an improvement, and gives us more choices…but that we can do better.
His chapters covering the Local, Sustainable food chain really had me sitting up in my chair, because it’s something I believe in. He spent some time living at and helping with Polyface Farm (a ‘grass farm’ in Virginia that produces sustainable chicken, pork, beef, eggs and produce) and goes into great detail describing the amazing ways this farm operates. Polyface Farm is the kind of agricultural operation that I imagine when I think of a future of sustainable agriculture. Joel Salatin, the owner, has incredible wisdom about what he is doing, and farms like his are quietly spreading the idea that we, as eaters and consumers, do not have to settle for the Industrial Agricultural system.
I’ll never view hunting in quite the same way after reading about his Gathered/Gardened/Hunted meal. Pollan really put into perspective some of the struggles I’ve had about eating meat in these chapters. I’ve been ‘almost a vegetarian’ for years…the key word being ‘almost’. Pollan brought a lot of issues up that resonated with me and my still-wanting-to-have-meat-sometimes struggles. He gives a lot of thought to what a person needs to be responsible for and have knowledge about if they are going to eat meat. What if the walls of our CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) were completely transparent? What if everyone knew exactly what was involved in getting that ‘inexpensive’ meat all the way to their plate? Pollan believes, and I full-heartedly agree, that if the business of meat processing were not ‘out of the way and out of view’, many more of us would completely lose our taste for meat.
My favorite part of Omnivore’s Dilemma is Pollan’s enthusiasm for the ability each one of us has to make choices and changes. In his Young Reader’s Edition of the book (which is highly valuable in its own right), aimed at middle/high school students, he includes an afterword called “Vote with Your Fork”. He states that “It’s an exciting time to be an eater in America. You have choices today that your parents couldn’t have dreamed of: organic, local, CSAs, humanely raised milk and meat. When they were your age, there was basically only one way to feed yourself: from the industrial food chain. You have the option of eating from a very different food chain—you can vote with your fork for a better world, one delicious bite at a time.” Indeed!
I highly recommend this book by Michael Pollan, and actually, I recommend reading the Young Reader’s Edition as well.
- Foraging
Along with planting and growing food, it is an amazing experience to find edible goodies in nature. Whether you love finding mushrooms, berries, or edible weeds, it really is possible to supplement your meals with foraged food. Or at the very least, you can find a great snack!
Meet our mulberry tree. It lives in the backyard, was probably ‘planted’ by a bird years ago, and it has been loaded with beautiful plump berries for a few weeks.
The kids have all been searching for the perfect berries when we go outside, and each day we get a nice amount in our bowl.
Here, Maggie and Rylee are finding lots of berries on the lower branches:
And here, Simon is taking matters into his own hands when all the berries from the lower branches are gone:
The mulberries have become a very popular snack around here, especially with 2-year-old Noah. We have found that if he gets ahold of the daily stash of berries, you will NOT be able to get near them without a fight!
He is fiercely protective of his foraged snack!
Finding berries on trees and bushes around your back yard (as long as you are certain about what they are and that they are in fact edible) is just the beginning of becoming a forager. Many books about gardening and living more self-suffiently/sustainably will have whole sections on foraging, and if you begin researching and learning what to look for, nature hikes will take on a whole new meaning.
And, you don’t even have to go far into the wild to forage. What about your neighborhood? Are there any fruit trees that you notice on walks around your city streets that bear fruit…fruit that ripens and eventually falls to the ground to rot? My neighbor across the street has a plum tree that produces way more fruit than she can use. In fact, her plums become a nuisance in her driveway when they start to fall. She is more than happy to share the fruit with anyone who wants to come pick it. My boys look forward to her plums every year! You’ll find that many neighbors will be glad to share food that would otherwise go to waste. I’ve read about ‘neighborhood fruit tree mapping’ in a few books, and this site is an example of how it works:
http://neighborhoodfruit.com/home
See if your city has a system like this set up. Google your town along with ‘fruit tree mapping’. My city doesn’t seem to have an official fruit tree registration set up…which of course gets my mind working…I’d love to start one up myself! 🙂
While it may not be quite the same as mushroom hunting or wild berry picking, foraging for food in the ‘wild’ of your neighborhood streets is an idea that’s catching on.
If you just have no luck with the foraging idea, it’s also very fulfilling to go to a local pick-your-own farm. Kids ADORE going to PYO (pick your own) farms! Usually for a very fair price, you’ll leave with loads of berries or produce. A google search can help with finding farms in your area that allow you to come pick to your heart’s content. Here is a site that will get you headed in the right direction, at least:
http://www.pickyourown.org/index.htm
Maybe you’ll be surprised by something in your backyard, like we were. We never knew those mulberries existed until last year, and we have lived here 9 years! Take a look around, and look closer to your left and right the next time you take a walk through your neighborhood–you may just find a sweet surprise. Happy foraging!
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- Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
This is the book that really started me on my journey of gardening. It reads like a fantastic novel, but is filled with facts and eye-opening struggles involved with our current food system.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara KingsolverMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
After renewing this book over and over from my public library, they finally want it back. I can’t bear to part with it! I will be buying my own copy, which I anticipate reading and referring to until it’s quite shabby.
Barbara Kingsolver sets out with her family to spend a year eating food within a 100 mile radius of her rural Virginia home. Whatever she and her family don’t grow or produce themselves, or cannot be found from local sources, they will go without. There are a few exceptions made at the onset (coffee being number one). However, the exceptions don’t detract from the project as a whole. Starting in April, the family goes week by week, month by month, eating what is in season and available locally. The goal: to prove that an ‘average’ American family can be part of the locavore movement successfully. Kingsolver acknowledges that most families do not have access to the land like her family does in growing food, so she focuses portions of the book on farmer’s markets and community supported agriculture (CSA’s) as well.
The book reads like great fiction, filled with passion. Kingsolver is a gifted writer who breathes immense life into every story she creates, and this ‘true story’ is no exception. Each of her family members has a place in the book, as well. Her partner, Steven Hopp, includes timely, researched essays on pertinent issues effecting our current food economy (and points to valuable websites and resources for further info). Her oldest daughter, Camille, writes a section after each chapter with humorous observations and recipes (even though at times she comes across as strangely smug beyond her young years, and at times is downright annoying). The youngest daughter, Lily, while not credited as a coauthor like the others, is a huge presence within the family’s story as she learns to raise chickens and gains incredible passion about every growing project as only a young child can.
I was surprised to read that the family intended to eat some of their own chickens (for some reason I pegged Kingsolver and her family as the vegetarian ‘type’…not the first assumption she shattered for me). I read about the process of butchering the chickens (and the turkeys), and was not horrified like I expected–Kingsolver brings humanity and respect to the life cycle of these animals–raised by her family with the best poultry life possible.
Kingsolver introduces the reader to many of the families surrounding hers, who all play a part in the community. The idea of community is a central theme in this book, as Kingsolver and her family branch out with their neighbors, speak personally to area farmers, and learn valuable lessons from those in their little corner of the earth.
If I tried to outline every important fact I learned from this book, the review would take up pages. Each time I flip through the pages another powerful idea pops out at me, and continues to inspire me on my own journey to attempt a more sustainable lifestyle.
I finished this book months before I finally wrote a review about it, because it affected me so profoundly. I couldn’t seem to find the right words to describe how the book altered my perspective about many things in my life. Perhaps I am biased because Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors, and this a book about a subject very near and dear to my heart (sustainable living). Or maybe the book touched me because so many pieces of the story brought back strong memories of my rural past: details that I once found boring and unbearably quaint were unearthed with a new passion and desire to reconnect to my roots. I read other scathing reviews about the book that accused Kingsolver of being sanctimonious, but all I can feel in her words is pure passion, at times, wry humor…and a consistent sense of realness. This is not your typical ‘gardening book’, it is a book that has the ability to change your life.
- The Outdoor Space
We have been dreaming of our garden for several years, and have run into difficulties each year. We do have a back yard, but it is small and is used primarily as the playspace for the daycare kids–as you can see, it is filled with playstuff:
The above picture is how the yard looks in very early spring. Looking at the picture I just took from the same view, you’ll see it becomes a much greener, happier space in the summer. But still, not much room for a garden: :)
We knew that for as long as we ran a daycare, we needed a separate, more protected area to grow food. Along the south wall of our house is a wonderful space, and we were inspired to turn this area into our garden.
It seemed like such a great area where we could just throw in some nice soil, put in some vegetable seeds, and watch the plants take over! HOWEVER. This is what happened every time we got some rain:
Yikes. Now that is what you call some flooding. This perfect area between the house and sidewalk has literally NO draining ability. Now, we are complete novices about all things gardening, but we instinctively know that this much water every time we get a slight rainfall isn’t exactly a plant’s idea of happiness. Too much of a good thing is very, very bad.
How could we make this space useful? First, we had to deal with the drainage issue. A little background: when we moved in, this space was already filled in with gravel. It grew lots and lots of weeds and was pretty unsightly. When we originally had the idea for the area to be a garden, we didn’t realize that the ugly, weedy gravel was serving a purpose: DRAINAGE. All we saw was a future dirt-filled area, so we spent a whole weekend removing all the old gravel, to make way for dirt. That was 2 years ago. A neighbor gladly took the gravel from us for his driveway. We couldn’t wait to fill up the empty space with some fertile soil and start growing…and then, it rained. And realization hit, hard. All the sweat and digging created nothing but a water pit.
Realizing we didn’t have the money to refill the area with stones right away, but still wanting to start growing for the season, we got some ‘whiskey-barrel liners’ and prepped them with drainage holes, a layer of rocks, and soil. These were our first planting containers.
We had tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers growing in the whiskey barrel liners, but they didn’t do well. The space around the containers still flooded every time it rained, and it just was not a healthy place for growing plants, which need air for their roots.
If we wanted a good, healthy growing place, we had a little work to do first. This spring we set out to create the Little Hands Garden. First, we cleared out all the weeds, clumps of grass, and saplings that had made a home in that gnarly place. Here, my 12 year old helps dig out some insanely strong clumps of weedy grass:
Once the weeds were evacuated, we staked down some weed liner…
Then hired a neighbor to bring in some river rock to fix our drainage problem. Upon the bed of rocks, went cedar garden boxes that were built by my Other Half, which we then filled with a mix of soil. I will admit, Other Half (aka Craig) did most of the work.
So now, for your viewing pleasure, if you haven’t grown tired of looking at pictures, you can see the BEFORE and AFTER shots of the Little Hands Garden:
BEFORE AFTER
The after pics are showing some lovely green! The plants that the kids and I started from seeds months ago seem to be doing very well in their new home!
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- Rain Barrels Rule!
Once again, the local newspaper’s Home and Garden section has come through for me! I have a barrel that I scored for FREE (which is another story to be told soon), and I am planning to make a rainwater barrel out of it. I can’t think of a more sustainable way to keep the Little Hands Garden happy and thriving.
Here is the article posted last Sunday that will be a great help as I set out to turn my free empty barrel into a rain barrel.
Samuel Hoffman | The Journal Gazette – Fort Wayne Indiana
Gardeners can customize their rain barrel setups as needed, such as with a diverter assembly.
Published: June 12, 2011 3:00 a.m.
Build your own rain barrel
Tap downspouts for free source of water for yard with master gardener’s advice
Rosa Salter Rodriguez | The Journal Gazette
Photos by Samuel Hoffman | The Journal Gazette
Rain barrels can help gardeners save money on watering, and they don’t have to be expensive. Kyle McDermott demonstrates how to make one from an old rolling trash bin at the local Purdue Extension office, which offers advice on building and using rain barrels.
Parts for making a homemade rain barrel should cost about $20.
The Journal Gazette
For gardeners, the concept of a rain barrel isn’t too hard to grasp.
You just catch the free water that flows off a roof now and use that instead of expensive tap water later to refresh vegetables, shrubs and flowers.
The mechanics of actually setting up a functioning rain barrel? Now there’s a problem. But it’s one that Lyle McDermott of Fort Wayne is trying to help solve.
McDermott, a master gardener, has been teaching area residents how to assemble rain barrel systems. And you don’t have to be a mechanical or botanical genius to get them working for you, he says. You just need to be willing to do a little math and have some rudimentary assembly skills.
“I’m a simple guy, so I believe in simple,” says McDermott, 68. “I show the easy and inexpensive way. For something like $20, not including the barrel, they can have one put together.”
McDermott says there are three major issues to consider in setting up a rain barrel system.
The first is figuring out how much storage capacity is optimal. Many gardeners, he says, drastically underestimate both how much rain will run off a given roof and how much water it will take to quench the thirst of a drought-stricken garden.
“A 1,000-square-foot roof – that’s only 50 by 20 feet – will produce about 500 gallons with an inch of rain. That’s 10 of these (typical) rain barrels,” McDermott says.
While 500 gallons may sound like a lot of water, it probably can be used up in a couple of days in a proper deep watering of a 10-by-16-foot vegetable garden, he notes.
Given that a house could have 5,000 square feet of roof, it might take 50 barrels to catch all that rain.
“So you have to be realistic in your expectations and not expect to collect every drop,” McDermott says.
Still, the problem of a lot of water is not insurmountable. McDermott has devised a way to link several rain barrels together with inexpensive hosing to fill them successively. An ideal system, he says, places two or three connected barrels under the gutter downspout at each of the four corners of a basic roof, hiding them behind shrubs, he says.
If they still can’t catch all the rain, a hose connected to the third barrel can direct water to a rain garden, a garden filled with water-loving plants, he says.
Or during heavy rainstorms, gardeners can always disconnect the downspout from the barrel and allow the water to go where it would if there was no barrel. McDermott stresses that it’s important to divert overflow water away from the home’s foundation if large amounts of overflow are anticipated.
The second issue, he says, is that standing water, especially if there’s any organic debris in it, can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes, which can carry West Nile virus.
So, McDermott says, any barrel should be tightly closed with even small openings screened. Ideally, its top should not be flat so as not to gather standing water, as mosquitoes can breed in just a couple tablespoonfuls of water.
McDermott likes to use barrels from Sechler’s Pickles in St. Joe, which are slightly domed. Barrels are available to the public for $10 to $20, says Max Troyer, Sechler’s owner. He advises an advance call to 260-337-5461 to check availability.
Pest-control devices called mosquito dunks and mosquito bits are another way to prevent breeding, says Ricky Kemery, horticulture educator with the Allen County branch of Purdue Extension at IPFW.
The dunks and bits contain harmless bacteria that kill mosquito larvae, he says. Dunks are put in the barrels, and bits can be sprinkled on top.
“They won’t hurt the plants,” he says. “You above all don’t want the barrel to be a mosquito breeding pit.”
The third issue is water transport. Yes, water is heavy – it weighs more than 8 pounds a gallon. That means in most cases, there should be a way of connecting a hose near the bottom of the barrel, although a simple spigot works for those willing to carry water to their plants.
McDermott says the pressure of the water above the hose connection is usually enough to get liquid through a length of hose or to a soaker hose.
The need to get a hose or container easily under the spigot makes him advise gardeners to place a rain barrel or barrels on top of sturdy, stacked concrete blocks or bricks or a platform made from treated lumber.
If multiple barrels are linked, the barrel connected directly to the roof gutter should be the highest, to allow gravity to assist in getting the water to subsequent barrels, he says.
The weight of the water in the barrels also leads some gardeners to affix them to the side of the house with metal strapping to keep them upright and avoid a safety hazard, Kemery notes.
McDermott says his system uses simple-to-find plumbing fixtures and standard hoses and nylon screening. The only tools required are a drill or knife and a screwdriver.
McDermott says that with an investment of less than $40, a gardener can save $200 to $400 or more in the cost of water over a single growing season if he or she is a city tap-water user. For a well user, the benefit is conserving water for household use at a time when wells might dip low because of drought, he says.
Another benefit of a rain barrel, Kemery says, is that research suggests plants prefer rain water to treated water. While tap water tends to be on the alkaline side, rain water tends to be slightly acidic, he says. That aids plants in absorbing nutrients, he says.
Kemery has a linked rain barrel system at his own home that incorporates about a half-dozen barrels and a kiddie pool outfitted with a small pump to help transport water to nearby gardens.
Although he doesn’t know how many Fort Wayne- area residents use rain barrels, he says more seem to be thinking about doing so.
“We do know calls (to the extension service) from people who ask about them seem to be increasing. We’ve had more than 20 so far (this year), whereas five years ago it would have been zero,” he says.
He adds that kits are now available at area home stores and garden centers for those who don’t want to go the home-made route.
“Five years ago, would you have seen anybody offering a rain barrel kit? No,” McDermott says.
“But,” Kemery adds, “water is a precious resource, and more people are seeing you need to start using it more effectively.”
Get a barrel
A limited number of rain barrels put together by master gardener Lyle McDermott are for sale at the Purdue Extension Service office for $35, with proceeds benefiting the master gardeners program. There also are instruction sheets available from the office; call 481-6826.
McDermott and fellow gardener Larry Bracht of Fort Wayne are available to speak to groups about rain barrels. McDermott can be reached at 402-5779.
rsalter@jg.net
Link to original article: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110612/FEAT07/306129937/1031/BIZ
Here’s another helpful link from fortwaynehomepage.com that includes a video:
http://fortwaynehomepage.net/rsh-fulltext?nxd_id=2565
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