Even as a little boy growing up in Mokena, Ken Benson knew that rainwater beats tap water when it comes to growing plants.
“It made my grandma’s garden grow like nobody else’s,” said Benson, now horticulture department chairman at Triton College in River Grove. “Her plants did great. Anyone who uses rainwater swears by it because plants do so much better. I, myself, whenever it rains, throw every bucket I can outside and use that water on my garden.”
If sales of rain barrels and accessories at major garden-supply stores are an indication, growing numbers of gardeners are collecting rainwater for later use in their gardens.
Benson’s method is about as simple as it gets. Benson’s grandmother’s method was about as elaborate as it gets. Every gutter on her house emptied into a 9-by-12-foot cistern. His grandmother used the rainwater from the cistern instead of groundwater from her well to keep her plants healthy.
Between the two extremes are the rain barrels, with accessories including stands, spigots, hoses and downspout fittings, available at garden-supply stores and catalogs. After an unusually dry winter, this might be the year for gardeners to learn to save and use the liquid gold they’ve been allowing to run into storm sewers.
As a horticultural expert, Benson knows why his grandmother’s garden did so well with rainwater. “It has natural ions and trace elements” that contribute to plant health, he said.
Soft and safer
Rainwater also is good because of what it lacks: chlorine, fluorine and other chemicals that are routinely added to public water supplies. Rainwater is naturally soft, and does not have salt that comes with softened water or carbonates and other hardening agents common in unsoftened well or lake water. All of these chemicals can harm plants, Benson said.
And because rainwater usually is stored outside, it is warmer than water drawn from a tap, reducing the chances of shocking plants with cold water, said Carolyn Ormsbee, staff horticulturist at Gardener’s Supply Co. in Burlington, Vt., one of the nation’s largest garden-catalog companies and a seller of rainwater collection systems.
Gardener’s Supply (888-833-1412 or www.gardeners.com) is seeing rain barrel sales climb, though for many buyers, the main reason for their purchase is not to benefit their garden.
“It’s mainly because of municipal watering bans,” Ormsbee said. “Millions of people literally can’t water their plants out of the tap. For that reason, they’re looking for free water.”
Only after using stored rainwater do they realize how beneficial it is for plants, she said.
Rainwater collecting is an ancient practice in arid lands, not only for plants but for drinking, washing and bathing.
It was common in the American Southwest during settlement times, but with the damming of rivers to divert water for human and agricultural consumption, the practice fell off.
Pressure is on
Now population and business growth have strained those water supplies, spurring renewed interest in rainwater collecting, said Hari Krishna, president of the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association and senior engineer at the Texas Water Development Board in Austin, Texas. “With water shortages, the old concept is coming back,” Krishna said.
It’s not difficult to collect rainwater. Position a barrel beneath a downspout and let rainwater flow into it. A series of barrels often can be connected. As one barrel fills, water flows into the next barrel in the series.
Putting a garbage can or bucket below a downspout, as Benson does, is the simplest way to collect rainwater. But the garbage can needs to be strong: Water weighs about 8 pounds a gallon. Krishna said most garbage cans would collapse if full of water.
Specially designed rain barrels — most are made of strong plastic or wood — can withstand the weight.
Fill ‘er up
Gardener’s Supply sells a “deluxe” rain barrel that holds 75 gallons and comes with accessories including a 4-foot hose with an on/off thumb valve, an overflow hose that diverts excess water away from the house, a safety lid to prevent children from falling in and a removable debris screen to keep sticks and leaves out of the water. The deluxe barrel sells for $130. The company also sells a 54-gallon barrel with accessories that currently is on sale for $99. They also sell sells accessories to link multiple barrels. A compact style that holds 40 gallons, modeled after an English tub, also is available for $74.95.
Lee Valley Tools, a tool and garden-supply catalog company in Ottawa, Canada, began selling barrels and accessories about 10 years ago. Lee Valley (800-267-8735 or www.leevalley.com) gets its barrels from England because they are high-quality and competitively priced, said Rob Lunan, Lee Valley’s manager of garden and gift lines.
Lee Valley’s 50-gallon rain barrel comes with a lid that can be cut to accept a downspout, a tap near the bottom and a 3-foot section of hose that attaches to the tap. It sells for $85.
Local stock
Locally, Wannemaker’s Home & Garden Center in Downers Grove sells rain barrels, according to Barb Weber, seasonal department manager.
“We’ve had several requests for them,” she said. “We saw them at a buying show and decided to bring in a few. We’ve sold four so far this spring. We’re down to one, so we’ve ordered a few more.”
Weber said the barrel is made of sturdy green plastic, holds 54 gallons and comes with a four-foot hose with an on-off valve, overflow tube and aluminum debris screen and costs $129.97. It also has fittings to link a series of barrels.
“In Europe, where treated water is very expensive, they started to develop a lot of rainwater products to save money,” Lunan said.
Lunan recommends setting barrels off the ground. This makes it easy to drain water from the spigot at the bottom of the barrel and empty it into a bucket or run it through a hose.
To create enough pressure to run drip lines or soaker hoses from a barrel, it needs to be several feet off the ground. Stands can be purchased with the rain barrels, though patio blocks or other items also will work.
At the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Bureau of Water in Springfield, spokeswoman Joan Muraro said the bureau takes no official position on rainwater. However, she said rainwater “is certainly a better alternative for plants” than municipal water treated with chlorine or other chemicals.
She said rainwater could pick up atmospheric pollutants or chemicals that might be on the roof it runs over, but she noted that water would reach the ground anyway.
If a person worries that rain has picked up atmospheric pollutants or chemicals from roofs, the solution is simple, Benson said.
“Let it settle. Rainwater in a rain barrel has reverse osmosis. Pollutants settle to the bottom.”
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Don’t grow skeeters
There’s one problem with collecting rainwater: Water standing in a barrel makes an ideal breeding place for mosquitoes. But following one or more of these simple precautions can virtually eliminate the chance that a rain barrel will become a breeding ground, according to the experts.
Keep it covered. Rain barrels usually come with tight-fitting lids to reduce evaporation, keep out insects and make them child-safe. Keep the rain barrels covered as much as possible. The same goes for garbage cans or anything else used to collect water.
Keep it clean. Mosquito larvae need food, which for them includes algae and other vegetable matter such as bits of leaves or grass. Keep leaves and grass out of the barrel and rinse it out from time to time.
Add a few drops of vegetable oil to the water. A film of oil across the surface of the water will keep mosquitoes from successfully laying eggs, according to Don Schellhaass , unit leader for the University of Illinois Extension.
Use mosquito control rings, floating disks that contain Bt `israelensis,’ a naturally occurring bacterium that kills mosquito larvae. The rings do not harm plants or animals.
— Steve Stanek
