Rain!

When I was in New Jersey last week, I blipped about how I haven't seen rain at home in Florida for so long. I'm back in Florida this week, and it's raining today! It was overcast most of the day, but didn't start raining until about 5:00 pm. It is 6:00pm now and already clearing up.

In our back yard, we have a 50 gallon rain barrel, positioned to catch the rain that comes off our roof. The rain barrel is connected to the outdoor hydroponic tomato plants, so that the appropriate water level is always maintained for the tomatoes. Now that the plants are huge and producing tomatoes, they use 8-10 gallons of water a day!

Since we have been getting so little rain, we quickly run through all the water in the rain barrel and have taken to filling the rain barrel with the hose in order to make sure the tomatoes have enough water. This pretty much defeats the purpose of the rain barrel! In order to use as much rainwater as possible, we now place 5 gallon buckets at a collection point in front of the house every time it rains. We empty these buckets into the 50 gallon rain barrel in the back of the house.

As soon as it started raining today, I put the bucket in this picture outside, but since it rained for a short time and not very hard at all, we only got about 2.5 gallons of water. I guess it is better than nothing!