Watering our edible garden

Rain barrels ©Janet AllenRain barrels

We have five of these homemade rain barrels. Three are places to capture the water from our roof downspouts. That water would otherwise run down into our sewers and, in a storm, combine with sewage and pollute our community's waterways.

We don't use the roof water in the vegetable garden because we have an asphalt roof and suspect that it wouldn't be pollution-free water. For the vegetable garden we fill several of the barrels with tap water and use that as needed.

watering seedlings ©Janet AllenWatering seedlings

We often use old milk jugs to water individual plants. We fill up a bunch of them from the barrels, capping them to prevent mosquitos, and then we can always grab one when we need water.

Here, John is watering a newly-planted seedling and using his hand to prevent the water from knocking over the little plant.