Harvesting rainwater to use for growing vegetables makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, the most common method of rainwater harvesting isn’t the most effective. Typically, gardeners invest in a rain barrel — which holds only 50 or 60 gallons of water — and then dole out the captured water to plants as needed, hopefully emptying the barrel before the next storm.
But 50 gallons is only a small fraction of the water you could be harvesting each time it rains. During a 1-inch shower, more than 900 gallons of water flow off the roof of a 30-by-50-foot house or barn. Instead of catching just a little bit of it in a rain barrel, why not capture it all? You can do just that with a simple setup that diverts rain from your downspouts directly to your garden. We’ll tell you more about how to do this in a minute, but first, we’ll explain why we think it’s such a good idea.
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Your Improved Rainwater-Harvesting System
To store as much rainfall as possible in your garden soil, you can set up a rainwater irrigation system that diverts your roof runoff water directly onto your garden beds (or lawn, if you prefer).
This rainwater-harvesting system relies on gravity to carry rainwater from your downspouts out into your garden or lawn. For it to work, the area you choose to irrigate must be level with or below your downspout. If your garden is not near a downspout, you may need to modify your setup, perhaps attaching a larger pipe to the downspout to carry the water out to a manifold and a set of perforated hoses in the garden.
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Rainfall patterns vary greatly from region to region, but even if most of your rain comes in fall or winter, this system will let you store it right in your garden beds. (Be sure the manifold is fully drained during cold weather to prevent damage from freezing.) If you have periods during which your garden gets too much rain and the soil reaches field capacity, you can simply redirect your hoses away from the garden for as long as you need to.
There’s a bonus to using this DIY rainwater-harvesting system: If the rain doesn’t come often enough and you need to irrigate using your household water supply, you can just aim your main hose into the trash can and turn on the water, and your network of hoses will distribute the water wherever you want it.
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Article source: Mother Earth News
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