River City Harvest

Harvesting the Rain (assuming we ever get any)

I am excited to see that the City of Richmond is encouraging residents to start composting by offering a high quality composting container for a great price.  Terrific idea!  Here's a suggestion for their next offering:

A rain barrel.

Dry spells during Richmond summers are pretty common.  Water restrictions are no fun for anyone concerned about their landscape, but when you're growing food that your family eats it's even more frustrating.  Rainwater harvesting is a very practical approach to reducing your municipal or well water use for landscaping.   Water can be stored and reserved for dry spells, or it can be used to supplement irrigation with municipal or well water.  I plan on investing in at least one of these next spring but I think it would be just great if the city could repeat their discount composter deal with rain barrels.

Rainwater harvesting is actually pretty interesting and the systems available can be very ambitious , like huge cisterns with pumps and filtrations systems that are designed to supplement the entire household water supply or systems that use rainwater for toilet flushing.  However, considering that up to 40% of household water use is for landscaping in Summer months, a simple rain barrel  (or two) seems like it could have a lot of impact, both on municpal water supply and on the wallet.  Additionally, rainwater is often softer and freer of contaminants than the water from the city or a well, and there's no chlorine.  That makes it easier on your plants.  I found some interesting links on rain water harvesting here , here , and here .  If anyone reading this has any experience with rain water collection for irrigation I'd love to get some feedback.

Thinking About a Party In Your Garden?

My husband found this cool idea for cheap and easy garden lights at Evil Mad Scientist this morning.  They're basically do-it-yourself battery powered LED lights made with tiny LEDs, lithium batteries, electrical tape and mason jars.  They look pretty nifty and they have the added bonus of being safe and not requiring you to string miles of electrical cords throughout your yard.

In case anyone is concerned about having to throw away all of those little lithium batteries, I did some checking and confirmed that Batteries Plus, at 9422 West Broad Street will accept lithium batteries for recycling.

The City of Richmond Wants To Help You Compost

(h/t to Tricycle Gardens   ):

The Richmond Clean City Commision will be holding a one day event to help Richmonders start composting.

On September 6, 2008 from 9am to 4pm go to the Compost Bin Truck Load Sale at the Willow Lawn Shopping Center located at 1601 Willow Lawn Dr. You’ll find them in the parking lot between Kroger’s and Gold’s Gym.

Get $100 value for just $35! The Earth Machine is an 80 gallon capacity composting bin that fits in any vehicle. Made of recycled materials, over 2,500,000 of these machines are in use across the country!

So I went and checked out the site for The Earth Machine and I have to say, this thing looks miles better than the bin I'm currently using:

Here's a pic of The Earth Machine (courtesy of their site):

Count me in!  I'll be at the event on Sept. 6 to pick up one of these babies.  I'll take pictures and post a follow up.  I'm really interested in the turn-out.  I'm glad to see the city doing this and also glad to see Tricycle Gardens promoting it, but I'd like to see the city doing more to get the word out.  I'll keep my eye out for some ads on TV or in the Times Dispatch.