Saving water on the allotment

Water is a precious thing. One minute it's raining for days and you long for the dryness of a sunny day. The next day it's baking hot and your poor greenhouse plants are parched and confused. That's the joys of British weather, it's unpredictable and extreme.

When it rains I try to think positively and see that it's watering my outdoor plants for me and filling my water butts up at the same time. On the plot we were lucky enough to inherit a large number of these huge blue water containers. I have no idea what they were once used for but we probably have 8 of them dotted around the plot. Sadly none have taps and most of them are filled with stagnant water that's been in there goodness knows how long. An added bonus is that many of them had lids which keeps the crawlies out.

It's great having them around to catch the rainwater but they're a little impractical as you have to dunk your watering can into them and when you've got arms as short as mine, it will be difficult to get water out of them when they're running low.

A solution was needed.

So on the weekend I charged up the drill, dug out a few large hole bits and set to work connecting up three of my water butts. To do this I needed to buy a few bits to connect them together - yet more cash spent on the allotment. These particular butts are located next to the greenhouse so will catch the water running off the roof. Thankfully there was already a guttering system on the greenhouse so it wasn't ANOTHER thing I had to buy.

I bought some new taps for the water butts and two connector kids off eBay. The taps were £1.89 each and the connector kits were two for £8.34.

I drilled holes in each butt to attach the connector hoses -ensuring that the first hole was higher than the hole in the second butt, ya know, for gravity to do it's thing. I also propped the butts up using breeze blocks to ensure the first and main butt was the highest, and then the third was the lowest.

Now when it rains and the first butt gets full, the water will drain through the hose and into the second butt. And when the second butt gets full, it will drain to the third etc etc.

Now I'm reluctantly hoping for rain to fill these huge containers up... it's almost a guarantee as this weekend is a Bank Holiday and it always rains on a Bank Holiday, right?