Dover DoodleHeads

Time to Plant: Square Foot Gardening

Even though I have a bit more space than I used to for my vegetable garden, this is still my favorite book - Square Foot Gardening. 

It gives you great plans for very efficient gardens and pairs plants that work together.... :) 

Time to Get Planting!!

Love My New Rain Barrel

I have a lot of plants... vegetable garden, potted plants, hanging plants.  This means lots of watering.  I had heard about rain barrels to "harvest" rain water from your downspouts, but was dubious. 

Well, I broke down and bought a not-so-bad-looking rain barrel last week and am THRILLED with it!  Some rain barrels are these big green or brown barrels, but I found one at Gardener's Supply Co that is plastic but looks like it is made out of pottery, so it doesn't look so bad near my patio. 

My downspout had a link at the right height for the smaller "Rainwater Urn" so it was an easy install - no sawing off of the downspout.... But my small "downspout diverter" that I got at Lowe's to make the downspout pour water into the Urn was our big question.... would it fall off once the water started pouring down?  And how much water would we get at all?  Would it be worth the $150 for this big hunk of plastic?

Well, we got a rainstorm on Sunday afternoon and my 45 gallon urn is almost FULL.  We watered the entire garden and all the plants with it and we still have water in it!  wow.   This rainwater barrel actually has a little spigot so even the kids can fill up buckets and watering cans from it.  Right now they still think its fun - so I have watering helpers.... we'll see how long that lasts!

 It's going to rain some more this week so we're all set for water for the garden for a while.  I am totally sold and am already thinking about getting another one!  Reuse rainwater, go green AND save money!