If you have a garden or alot of plants then you know that you can use quite a bit of water keeping everything green, especially when there are days or weeks between rain showers. I have noticed rain barrels being sold at Whole Foods for $99 and thought the construction looked simple enough to do on my own and possibly at far less a price. So I undertook the task of doing just that. I picked up an empty barrel at a local farm store that once contained olives. It even had one olive left inside when I got it, I didn’t eat it as tempting as it was. Make sure you find a food grade barrel for this project, you don’t want unknown chemicals spread onto your garden or plants. All of the parts needed I either had lying around or picked up at the local Home Depot.

• (1) 3/4″ Male Hose Bibb (I used a no kink bibb)
• (2) 3/4″ PVC Female Adapter
• (1) 3/4″ tapped Male Hose to Male adapter
• (2) 1″ Galvanized or Brass Washers
• (4) #18 O-rings (1″)
• Teflon Tape
• 1″ Hole Drill Bit
• (1) Brass Hose Cap
• 18″x18″ Square Metal Screen
• (8) Aluminum Self-starting Screws

3/4″ Male No-Kink Hose Bibb

  3/4″ Tapped Male Hose to Male Adapter

#18 O-Ring (1″)

Teflon Tape

3/4″ PVC Female Adapter

 1″ Hole Drill Bit

First, clean the barrel inside and out. I did not use any detergent, only a few heavy rinses of water for the inside.  Next, drill two holes using the 1″ hole drill bit.  The first of the two should be about 3-4 inches from the bottom of the barrel on a flat surface above the curve of the barrel.  The second will be near the top of the barrel and will be used as an overflow valve.  After drilling both holes wrap the end of the 3/4″ hose bibb in teflon tape, a strip about 4 inches long should suffice, then place, in order, a 1″ washer and one of the o-rings onto the bibb and thread it into the bottom hole on your barrel.  Now, you may need a second person to help.  You will need to reach into the barrel and place a second o-ring onto the bibb and screw the 3/4″ inch PVC female adapter onto the bibb.  You will need someone to hold the bibb from the outside while you tighten the PVC adapter from the inside.   Once the bibb has been installed move to the top of the barrel.  Take the 3/4″ male hose adapter and place a strip of teflon tape around the threads not used for the hose, the ones closer together.  Next, place a 1″ washer and a o-ring onto the adapter and thread it into the top hole.  Place an o-ring and the second 3/4″ PVC female adapter on the hose adapter inside the barrel and tighten.

Bottom bibb assembly attached

Bottom bibb assembly showing o-ring behind washer

Female PVC adapter attached to bottom bibb assembly inside barrel

Male Hose to Male adapter assembly at top of barrel (overflow)

 View of overflow assembly showing o ring

 Female PVC adapter attached to male adapter assembly (overflow)

The lid of your barrel my be different from the one I have. The barrel I used had a two-piece lid with a cover and a ring to tighten the lid on, similar to a canning jar. In order to keep debris and mosquitoes out of the barrel you will need to attach a screen to the lid.  I did this by cutting a 8″ diameter hole in the lid and attaching a piece of metal screen underneath.  I used the plastic circle I cut from the lid and cut that into four 1″ wide strips.   Using a square piece of screen wrap each of the corners around a strip and attach to the lid using aluminum screws.

Screen attached to lid - bottom view

Screen attached to lid- Top view

Your rain barrel is now complete.  You will need a place to put your barrel so it can catch run-off from your gutter downspout.   A platform which is level is very important as a full barrel weighs about 400 pounds and would be very dangerous to people or animals who may be around if it were to topple over.   Also, you will need to place the barrel at a height which is higher than to place you want to water using a hose to create sufficient waterflow.

Platform built using concrete blocks

Once you are ready to setup the rain barrel cut the gutter downspout at a place higher than the top of the barrel and use a plastic downspout hose to redirect the water to the top of your rain barrel.  You may want to cut a section of the downspout out and leave the bottom portion of the downspout in place.  Doing so allows you to fill the gap in the downspout wiht a piece of tubing so when your rain barrel is not being used, such as during the winter, you can once again have use of the downspout.

Downspout Tubing

Your rain barrel will fill quickly during a downpour and the top overflow spout will be handy if connected to a hose into a spare bucket or another rain barrel.

Completed Rain Barrel

The total cost of this project was just under $25,  a considerable savings from the $99.99 Whole Foods charges for a rain barrel which does not include your platform or downspout tubing.   You can decorate the outside however you see fit.  Paint it to match your home exterior or let the kids have fun with the paint, you can even drape plants over the top and sides as I will be doing soon.  Also, this is a very simple project that only takes an hour at most to complete and will save you money.

Away from this site for the past week at least.  I have been taking care of things outside with the garden and preparing an herb garden.  Those tasks just take time away from the little things.  We have peppers, tomatoes, okra and squash growing in the garden so far.  The herb garden is taking a little longer as we need fill dirt and some more boundary rocks before it is planting time.  Two loads of mulch later the yard is looking much better.  A large maple tree was cut down this week in the front yard as it had died on one side and was threatening to fall onto our house.  I hated to cut down a huge tree, especially since it gave much needed shade in the afternoon sun but I also didn’t want to repair a roof.   Now we are looking for fast-growing shade replacement for that area.  Hybrid poplars and weeping willows are being considered.

In the cooking department I haven’t created anything earth-shaking lately.  The past week has consited of spaghetti marinara and tempeh sausage.   Red beans and rice,  roasted corn and macaroni and “cheese” and the usual veggie burgers (Amy’s are the best).   My wife did make coconut-lime cupcakes, those are always earth-shaking.   I owe someone a recipe and/or batch of eggless cornbread.  I’ll get to that one soon.

Other than those small things nothing much going on.

We do have fresh kittens, more on that later.

Back from vacation, unpacking and trying to get back into the groove of things at home.   Our vacation was very much needed and relaxing and an opportunity for me to go without any sort of attachment to a computer.   I took no laptop with me, used no public access and stayed Internet-free for a week, quite the accomplishment.  Most of the veggie blogs, or food blogs, post pictures of their eats along the way.  I am not a big food photographer while sitting in a restaurant.   I did manage one picture while in Atlanta, but I will get to that later.

We started our vacation in St. Augustine, Florida.  My wife went to college there and I/we have visited countless times.  There was one vegetarian restaurant in town that we knew of, Manatee Cafe, but we found another while driving around.  The Present Moment Cafe is a raw food restaurant with a small deli located next door.  We visited the deli and looked at the menu of the restaurant but decided to pass.  Prices seemed a little high and it was “pretty food”.   Not to take anything away from The Present Moment Cafe or anyone who enjoys eating artsy food, but I am not into trying to figure out why a chef used this color or that texture to accent my collard greens.   Make the food tasty, put it on a plate and make it enough so that I leave your restaurant full.   Putting a sliver of whatever on a plate, dancing some dribbley sauce around it and sprinkling some fluff about does not dinner make.

Our first eating out was The Manatee Cafe.  This is a basic vegetarian restaurant with a menu of sandwiches, wraps and salads.  They have a great tofu reuben which I have had previously but this morning I wasn’t extremely hungry and went very basic with hash browns and grits.   The hash browns here are actually very chunky-cut potatoes fried crispy with Spike seasoning, nothing special but very tasty.  My wife had the veggie wrap (Tofutti, hummus, carrots, sprouts, mushrooms, sweet potatoes and avocados) with hash browns.   Everything was great and as expected.   No pictures,  it is the “Hey, I like to take a picture of my food so I can remember what I ate.” thing that I can’t get to.

If you ever visit St. Augustine you will go to St. George Street.  With it being the oldest permanently settled city in the US there are many old houses and buildings to be seen and many are along St. George Street, though they have been transformed into modern gift shops and trinket stores.  The oldest school house is on St. George Street but more importantly so is The Spanish Bakery.  No where else can you get some of the best soup a big loaf of fresh baked bread and three VEGAN lemon, cinnamon or almond cookies for $5.   The bakery is a small hut with just enough room for a row of cookies on display and three pots of soup.  Table are outside under large shade trees which are handy on hot, sunny days.  In the summer they have a very good gazpacho, however, they only had a vegetable soup on our visit which was still excellent.

View sitting outside of The Spanish Bakery on St. George Street.

Our fix for sweet stuff was found at Rita’s, an Italian Ice place on St. Augustine Beach.  Rita’s is a chain located mostly on the east coast but this is the only one we have ever visited, and we do each time we go to St. Augustine.  The have Gelati and custard ice but we always get the vegan Italian Ice option.  Flavors range from tropical punch, black cherry, vanilla, chocolate, pina colada, lemonade and mango.   I think of the three times we went there I had six or seven large ices, I lost count, but the best was the mango.   Cold, sweet and with little bits of mango.  I just looked at their website and noticed locations are coming to Hermitage and Mt. Juliet.

Most of our time in St. Augustine was planned to be spent on the beach and it was.  Six hours in one day allowed for plenty of digging in the sand and burning of our skin.  While walking around in a few places the smell of shrimp boil hit me.  Not the smell of the shrimp but the combination of spices used to boil the shrimp.   I love the smell and it instantly made me want to boil something in those spices to munch on.  Since getting back I have gotten together all of those spices along with some corn and potatoes that will be boiled and enjoyed on the patio one evening, a post about that will come later.

 Mean people not allowed on St. George Street

Each trip to St. Augustine also gets us to go to a local nursery to pick out some plants that are a bit uncommon here.   I am a bit of a tropical plant enthusiast so you shouldn’t be surprised to see my fruit-bearing orange trees and palms.   I managed to find a Green Saw Palmetto and a Washingtonian Palm that were small enough to fit in the car for the ride back.  We also found a Madagascar Palm and a Longleaf Pine, both which are less uncommon here, for the ride back to be added to our plant family.

Washingtonian Palm and Green Saw Palmetto

So, to summarize, St. Augustine, good.  Pretty food, bad.  The Manatee Cafe, good.  The Spanish Bakery, good.  Beach, GOOD.

Yesterday consisted of a long day of getting our yard in some kind of shape that we would be happy with.  We had gotten 20 azaleas and planted those along the front walkway of our house.   Mulched and ready to make the front yard look so much better.   We’re the third owners of the house, the first owners were apparently plantaholics.   I realized there is a five-foot azalea growing at one corner of our home when the white blooms showed up this week.   A lilac bush is also blooming, as are plenty of daffodils.  There’s a group of peonies that are budding as well.   I planted 20 or so alocasias along our back driveway that I had been growing in a pot for about 5 years.  I am sure they are happy to get a spot of ground to call their own.

My wife’s daffodils, hyacinths and tulips are in full bloom and look spectacular.   I think she is very happy with the variety she planted.  Irises should be blooming next week.

We plowed up a small patch, about 15′x15′, for a vegetable garden.  We’ll be planting tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe and maybe eggplant in a couple weeks.   A smaller herb garden will be fixed up later.  Both will be organic, of course.

It’s time to plan gardens.  We have a new house and plenty of yard space to transform into patches of edibles so work will begin soon.  We’ve made a short list of what will be included.  As of now, a medium sized vegetable garden and two smaller herb gardens are planned.

Herbs to be included:

• Rosemary
• Basil, Sweet
• Oregano
• Lemon Balm
• Thyme
• Sage
• Parsley
• Catnip (Something for the rodents we keep as pets.)
• Peppermint
• Spearmint
• Cilantro
• Dill

Vegetables:

• Squash - Yellow
• Eggplant
• Sweet Potatoes
• Tomatoes, Roma & Beefsteak
• Peppers - Bell, Datil, Poblano, Anaheim
• Cucumbers
• Onions
• Broccoli

I am sure more will be added as we get into it and know exactly how much room we will have.  I would like to plant artichokes, I think that may have to wait a year.   Asparagus is another one but I’ll need to make space around the yard elsewhere as keeps on giving and I don’t want to risk digging it up by getting the gardenspace ready each year.

I have all the organic pest control I should need.  Neem oil has done the job quite well in the past and should suffice now.   Organic veggies and herbs throughout the season should get me cooking regularly.

With a new house comes all sorts of plans for a spring season of fix-it-ups.  I am guessing it does at least, this house was our first.  So for me that statement is true.  Our biggest plans this year are for the outside.  Flowerbeds wil be plowed up and planted, I think we have eight or so in the works and those include herb gardens.  A compost pile has already been started.  The main goal is to get a vegetable garden going this year.   I would expect it to cut down dramatically on what we purchase at the grocery store each week.  We have had bell peppers and tomatoes at the house we rented but I tried to keep them in pots.  With room for a full-fledged garden I am thinking beans (black beans, pinto beans), carrots, beets, lettuce, celery, onions and garlic.   I have a few tricks I am intending to try which I learned from The Organic Gardeners for the short time I had Sirius last month.  There are also some rosebushes that came with the house that I must do something with.  They seem to be old and in need of pruning.  Maybe I should talk to them as well, I hear that works.

It is beyond time to put up a Christmas Tree but we can’t seem to find what we’re looking for. Does anyone know of a vendor in the area that is selling trees with root balls? I don’t want a cut tree, we plan on planting each tree for the next few years in the back yard. Cut trees are a waste and no matter how you try to justify the “mulchability” after you’re finished with it I just see it better to be able to plant the tree and enjoy it for years to come. So, if you run across a place selling them in the Nashville/Franklin/surrounding area while you are out getting your own, let me know…ok?

I have two plants growing in my yard, I have no idea what they are.   I have seen neither bloom so I can’t give blossom descriptions.  Does anyone have any ideas?   

I have just cut down some boxwood shrubs and a small maple tree in my yard and would like to prevent them from coming back.  I need to kill the root but I would like to keep it natural and organic.  I don’t want to use any chemical herbicides and risk contaminating other parts of my lawn… and my family for that matter.  Does anyone have any suggestions for getting rid of the roots and stumps so they won’t return?  All help appreciated.