Little Square Farm Rain Barrel Review

Best. Idea. Ever.

Free water, my friends, is a gardener’s dream. Plants don’t care that you’re too cheap to give them sparkling clean drinking water. God bless the rain barrel. Since installing (well, having my dad install) my new rain barrel, I have used the hose a total of ZERO times to water my meager garden. I feel like I’ve discovered a secret.

Now, I will say that I have no idea how much I spent watering the garden last year, so I don’t have a great base for cost-comparison purposes. But I imagine that this rain barrel will last many growing seasons if it’s properly wintered. At just under $60, I would guess that it pays for itself in just a year or two. Gardeners with hard data, jump in here any time…

Time to get down to the nitty gritty. The functioning of a rain barrel.

This variety is a base model. It’s equipped with a spigot at the bottom, an overflow hose and an opening at the top for the water to enter through. The opening is covered in a very fine steel mesh. The downspout, purchased separately, sits on top of this mesh and spews the water into the barrel from your gutters. The mesh is key to keeping mosquitos from breeding in this stagnant water.

My first day of rain barrel bliss saw it fill up in under an hour during a downpour. I have mine feeding from my garage’s gutter system, and only one side of the garage. That’s probably less than 200 square feet of roof on which the water fell. I could have easily filled up a dozen barrels during that downpour if I’d had them hooked up to all four of my downspouts.

The water from my 30-gallon barrel lasts through 3 thorough soakings of approximately 5- square feet of garden, watering about every day and a half.

Little Square Farm, the maker of my rain barrel, repurchases food-grade barrels being disposed of by local restaurants. A win-win-win in my book!