There will be a rain dance this Friday, Weather Permitting.

The weather will permit. This is South Texas. Whats a Texas gardener to do?

Enter stage left: rain barrels!

The newest members to our gardening family.

Hot tip: Buy 13 cent goldfish after a heavy rain, throw them in the barrels and let them eat your mosquito eggs to their hearts content. If they die? Fish emulsion. So far ours have survived. 2 weeks and counting.

Originally we planned to buy rain barrels premade from Dave the Barrel Man: http://www.davethebarrelman.net/. I think they ran from barebones 35.00 to fancy upgrades 65.00. Reasonable...

Still we decided we could make them cheaper and it could involve my husband buying tools. Two requirements to any home improvement project.

The barrels themselves are food grade 60 gallon plastic and were around 25.00 from Dave.
Food grade barrels are important so you can get barrels that held oh say- Cajun hot sauce - and not oil or car washing soap.

Side note: who was ordering 60 gallons of hot sauce at a time? If you can find that person- you can cut out the middle man and get your barrels for free.