RAIN BARREL HELPFUL HINTS From Penelope Marth

I recently attended a rain barrel making class at Longview Gardens with another fellow Missouri Master Naturalist. Laura, from Bridging the Gap was the teacher and there were several valuable volunteers to help.

The class was fun and it was great to meet people of like minds and learn something new that will be helpful to my yard the "back yard of us all"; the planet.

Instead of cutting your gutter drain pipe, add a Flex- A- Spout. See picture. You can get them at Lowe's and other stores. As chance would have it, my fellow MMN friend had bought two 4" ones for her gutters but it turns out that she had 5 inch gutters..

I took them home expecting to use them to channel water farther away from my house, but used one to attach my rain barrel from the guttering!

I'd been having problems getting the end piece to stay attached anyway....the dogs kept knocking it off, leaving a drain about 6 foot up in the air. This looked awful and left water to splatter and freeze on the driveway causing four legged and two legged alike to sprawl around helplessly: it was the perfect place for the rain barrel. It is also the lowest drain on the guttering!

This turned out to be about 3 feet above the barrel. Because of the lay of the land/driveway underneath it, the barrel also has to sit about 6 inches from the gutter. The Flex-a Spout could be pushed higher or lower onto the pipe to fit to the length I needed.

The same type of plastic pipe that the Flex-A-Spout comes in can be bought in longer amounts, so that you can reach your end piece of guttering or channel the water as far away as needed, or even bury the pipe.

If you need to move your rain barrel later, just re-attach the piece that you took off with the same attachments or use metal strapping (you can get it in different colors too). No fuss, no muss.

Here are some plants that mosquito's don't like. Pelargonium citrosa (a bushy dark green leafy plant that does well in pots starts from a bulb), marigolds, geraniums, artemisia. You could put them in pots and sit them on top of your rain barrel (s) or plant around that area. They look pretty and serve a great value as repellents. Do a search on line to find more.

Remember, mosquito's love mint and other plants from the mint family, like catnip, so plant them at appropriate distances from you water sources.

Being an artist, I thought of some simple designs you could paint on your barrel. A white picket fence is mostly straight lines and would be easiest on the white barrels by adding dark outlines.

An easy way to add leaves would be to cut an ordinary kitchen sponge into the shape of a leaf or cut more for varied shapes of leaves...and sponge on with different shades of green or fall colors...that go well with your house.

Also, you could paint it to look like a wooden barrel or use sponges again, i their shapes as is and make it look like bricks. Use 3 shades. Light, medium and dark to what ever you paint and you love the effect.

Lattice can be painted or affixed to your barrel. White plastic lattice is really flexible, sometimes you can find it in darker colors, or paint it...or paint the background in a color to match your house or just green.

I hope this information will be of value to you. Enjoy your rain water and your gardens!