Goin to harvest the worm castings today

So after about 3 months I will be harvesting all the worm castings I have at this time in our worm composting bin. When I add food to the compost bin, it looks like there is a lot of castings to get. I plan on making worm tea as well as spreading the castings as a top dressings in the garden.

Found a great place for the rain barrel

I've found a great place in the yard today for our rain barrel. Originally I was going to have only one rain barrel located here, (as in the picture), however I've now changed my mind and will add two rain barrels in this location. I will also add a few cape honey suckle plants to hide the rain barrels. I also have some other idea's on how to help camouflage the rain barrels and keep people from seeing a huge blue barrel in our yard, after all this is a very active HOA over here :)

Here is the before photo of where I want to put the rain barrel(s). The second rain barrel will go towards the left. This is getting to be a larger project than I fist imagined. I was only going to add one rain barrel to our side yard for the garden...now my plans are to add a total of six rain barrels around the house! They will be in groups of two in the areas where we get a lot of run off when it rains. The image your looking at below will be where the rain barrels are kept to water our four citrus trees. They require around 20-25 gallons each every 7 days or so during the summer. Two full rain barrels would water these citrus trees beautifully! The other rain barrels will water both our raised gardens and the front yard. It's a dream at this point, but becoming more real every day.

Building rain barrels - Adding the hose spigot / hose bib

Had a few free minutes today so I decided to drill the hole for the hose spigot. I'll get you the exact size of the spigot I used later. Right now all I remember is that I used a 1" hole saw to make my cut out, and used teflon tape around the threads before threading the hose bib all the way into the rain barrel.

Of course when I saw a blue hose spigot you know I had to use those! It really looks good with this style hose bib. I have angled the hose bib slightly on an upward angle. This should allow me to keep the barrel on level ground,(without using any stands), and still connect a piece of hose to this hose bib without leaving that much empty space inside the bottom of my rain barrel. My plan is to not use any type of stand or base under my rain barrel and see if I can still get a hose connected without much headache. The rain barrels on stands or some type of base scare me as far as them falling over for whatever reason. If I angle my water spigot just enough, like in the photo, I think I can have my rain barrel sit on the flat dirt and still not loose much water that would settle below the spigot inside the barrel. This would also help me keep the rain barrel from standing to tall in which it will be more obvious. I'm trying to make my rain barrel very incognito and blend into the landscape :)

I also used a small amount of aquarium silicone around the hose bib in addition to the teflon tape around the threads for a water tight seal.

How to make rain barrels using food grade 55 gallon barrels

So I decided adding a few rain barrels would be a great way to reduce our use of water we have to pay for. I'll be doing this process from start to finish all the while adding pictures of the progress along with posts on idea's and such.

I am very excited to start this rain barrel project and anxious to see how much water we can collect from our Arizona rain storms.

Here is an image of my rain barrels. So far I have two, but I plan on adding a few more  in the near future. My rain barrels are food grade, 55 gallon blue plastic barrels with removable lids that secure to the top of the barrel with a metal clamp.

REMEBER:
- Always use a FOOD GRADE barrel so that you do not contaminate your rain water with chemicals that were once inside the plastic barrel.

- Removable lids are a MUST in order to clean your rain barrel properly.

I look forward to posting more progress soon. You might have rain gutters installed on your residence, I however do not. After I find the perfect place to put the rain barrel, I will have to install rain gutters on the roof. This should not be very hard, although I've never installed rain gutters before. Time consuming at the least is all.

Worm coposting bin video 3 week update