Captured some rainwater. . .

It rained a little bit last night so I ran to the rain barrel this morning to look at the catch. Looks like about 20 gallons, which is way more than I expected from the tiny amount of rain we got. The only problem is, the water looks like tea. It likely is a tea of sorts... water steeped in the pine needles and branches that clog our gutters.

I suppose it's also possible that this is general filth from the roof, as it's been a very dry summer and lots of pollen and debris and so forth have been sitting up there for a long time. I'll probably drain this water off and clean the gutters and see if we can't collect some cleaner water next rainy day.

A Rain Barrel!

Today I picked up a rain barrel (rain capture barrel) from Home Depot. We have a metal roof, and a LOT of rainwater drains off of it during the fall and winter months so I figured I should probably be capturing some of it.

I bought the barrel pictured here. It's a 57 gallon model with a standard hose-adapted faucet attached, which is handy. I don't find that I use a lot of water growing my plants, but my water usage for the bucket garden is roughly double what it takes to grow the plants once I account for all of the water I use for cleaning and sanitizing equipment.

City water is very cheap, so this is more of a conservation decision than an economic one. One more upside to using rainwater is that it is chlorine-free. I haven't actually captured and used any rainwater yet, so I don't know what the pH is.

I plan on using regular old drugstore hydrogen peroxide to sanitize the rainwater before it is used for plants.