Northern Gardening; Mary Blickenderfer

Supporting northern gardening comes from box hardware offering a full selection of gardening supplies organic options and weather hard annuals and perennials and support also comes from Ebony Thorson incorporated contractors working to fill landscaping needs in the northland celebrating 60 years of serving Cook County 3 8 7 1 6 4 4. Well welcome to Northern gardening. I'm your host Paula send it. Glad to be with you in this beautiful Friday. You're listening on Thursday it's a rebroadcast. You're welcome to call in either Friday or Thursday. Well we will be here to answer the phone on Thursday. But you're welcome to call in with questions our number here is 3 8 7 10 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7 you can also e-mail WTOP Boreal org. And joining us for northern gardening is Mary Blick interfer. Mary good morning. Good morning Paula. Mary is a U.N. a University of Minnesota extension educator she operates out of Grand Rapids what works with the whole state. She's going to talk with us about building rame gardens. We've gotten so much rain this year

that actually seems like a really good topic for today. Have you gotten as much rain where you are in Grand Rapids. You know we have often and we've had a little bit of drought and then more rain then we know what to do with but not as much rain as they've gotten elsewhere in the state. Well you know it would be interesting to kind of define what a rain garden is because a lot seems like just a misconception. But Mary would you define it for us. I'll give it a try. A rain garden is a very shallow depression that captures runoff from rooftops driveways streets any sort of surface that doesn't allow rain to filter into the soil. It could even be contacted soil that had heavy machinery on it. But this depression captures the water momentarily for up to 24 to 48 hours and during that time the water that it captures filters into the soil or it evaporates into the air or the

plants that are in the rain garden actually take up the water transpired into the air. So it is not a water feature or a water pond that has water in it permanently during the summer time but it rather is a very temporary sort of pond that captures it. And it just for a few days at most sometimes only a few hours. If a person is in sandy soil. And so if there's no problem with hatching mosquitoes in it that they take longer to go through their life cycle and it's meant to be pretty and functional at the same time. So is it. What kind of problems is it really designed to address because that seems like is that kind of whole range hardening started correct. It's actually considered a storm water runoff Beach area. So it's in the Minnesota stormwater manual standard and recommendation

and it's called other things like bio retention facilities and that sort of thing but that's a technical fancy name but it's actually the same thing. If you think about raindrop spores you know like that melts if you will but a drop of water that's coming out of the sky usually lands on the soil and filters in and become part of the groundwater table. And a small percentage of it perhaps 10 percent naturally run into our surface water go through a lot of vegetation has already sort of had a mentor. Other nutrients that it picked up perhaps filtered out before it gets there for the most part. When we start developing a landscape with homes and roads and streets and that sort of thing the rain falling on the surfaces doesn't have anywhere to go into the soil at least. And so we have all kinds of rain gutters and

storm drains that go oftentimes directly into our surface waters. So it's actually kind of a three fold problem that we're solving. Number one we're helping to recharge the groundwater table because we're allowing the water in the rain garden to filter into the soil rather than be channeled directly into our surface waters. We're also filtering out any pollutants that it might pick up on the way. If you think about you know running across surfaces in any lawn fertilizers pathways those sorts of things would be caught in the rain garden perhaps utilized by the plant and or filtered out before it actually gets to the groundwater table. We're reducing the volume of water that's entering our surface waters which in turn causes periods of flooding following stormy them. And so it's actually helping to reduce the flooding of some of those places where

the runoff leads directly to rivers especially but also to Lake. And I guess there's even a fourth issue and it's especially pertinent up the North Shore area and that is it reduces the temperature of the water. Think about water flowing off of a parking lot directly into a storm drain that goes directly into a trout stream. Not a good thing for the trout to raise the temperature of that water. I know there are a lot of studies being done on the streams right along the north shore there with bats. The specific reason in mind taking a look at what's happening there. So it's actually turned out to be four fold. Yeah well and I you know that brings up an area about gardens that it seems like a kind of new on the horizon about designing parking lots to be either more permeable area or at least a section that I innocence I guess would be kind of considered a rain garden. Exactly. So that you're not having all that kind of runoff fight.

I don't can you just describe a little bit of that would be designer usually with those at all. Well I am and I've I've seen them and I've certainly seen plenty of pictures of them as well but was just at a church over in what being a county on the west northwestern part of our state and they had designed one and there's several that have been done elsewhere. There are two ways of addressing it. If you if it's a brand new parking lot. One way is to take out or not install rather than the curb on the edge and allow what we call heat flow. That means just a whole sheet of water as you see flowing across the parking lot during a rain storm allowing that whole seat to just lower right into a rain garden. So a person would perhaps agreed the parking lot a little different with the depression maybe in the center to capture the rainwater from both sides but then not put the curb there so

that the water just flows as a continuous feed into the garden. Less erosion problems there and then the water is distributed throughout that rain garden. If a person has to retrofit an existing parking lot they can cut not to in the curb curb cut there called and channel that water through these are cut in the curb into the garden and then the water would spread out over the entire area. As it enters a little bit more problematic in that you've got a little bit of tantalize flow coming in there in high velocities that there's a potential to erode it. So you just take some precaution than armor that perhaps with a little bit of rock or something too right at the entrance so it doesn't erode right there. But then the idea is that that water would spread out over the entire area and water the plants. Yeah that's a good idea. There's a kind of an extra I don't know if it's a

benefit. There's been some research done on it but if you think about the quality of water that's coming off of the road surface there's parking lots those sorts of things compared with what might come off of a roof top or patio out in someone's backyard. They're very different. The first one I talked about I I consider dirty runoff that it would have a lot of auto fluid perhaps and some other chemicals in it the water that comes off of roofs and patios. I would want to drink it but it's relatively clean by comparison. And so that's much less of a problem. And so the rain gardens that are adjacent to roadways and parking lot. Multi shredded mold and the micro top layer of the oil are actually really important and many of those can break down some of the petrochemical and auto fluid that come in there

to a large extent because we don't want those getting in our ground water either. So that you know back in the dish you know if you were some of those roadway related main garden. Well I would think that driveway is on a steep grade would be the same thing so what you're talking about a huge expansive parking lot or just a driveway. Yeah another factor and what it's made out of. Exactly exactly yeah. So how about the more in the terms of the other basic thing you were talking about what comes off the gutters and that kind of seems like it would be most appropriate in a city kind of or suburban type community where you really are worried about where is the water going it's one thing it was just wandering off into the woods. But if it's heading over to your neighbor's yard some object. Yeah yeah well there's the density of people and the impervious surfaces is much greater the more urban you get

and also the tendency there is to do this storm drain where you have the water being captured by the curved and flowing into the storm drain and often times directly into the surface water and so there it is incredibly important there are smaller communities that have similar issues just not quite as large of a scale. And again that's one way to keep that neighborhood friendly. It will not be creating a problem for the neighbor. So if somebody has a water situation where they're aware of a name you know they've got gutters in place and they know that the water's running off and basta melts. Get out or you want to talk about the square inches of impact of an inch of rain. But maybe we should talk about how much rain is actually coming up for us. Yeah well you kind of have to scale it down but I always think of it actually in terms of rain barrels. If you have a 55 gallon rain

barrel and 0 1 inch rain you have 90 square feet of impervious surface roof driveway whatever. Probably not a driveway but a rooftop that would fill that 55 gallon reindeer only think you know 90 feet that's 9 by 10 that's not very big that's probably smaller than the room in our house. So you've got 55 gallons just from that small area in a 1 inch rain and then you multiply that by However large your roof is much larger than that and you know you're starting to stack the rain barrels up there just for a visual image of the kind of amount of water we're looking at dealing with. Yeah it's cute. Yeah it is. For a modern power it's not going to have 300 gallons of water coming up in a rain event. Yeah which And you think about well where is that going either into your basement and hopefully not

or into your neighbor's basement which also you would hope not. And when we received four to five inches of rain I guess it was a little over a month ago. There were several people who were struggling with water in their basements. Can a can arrange deal with that much water. It totally depends upon the oil. The area that you have available to install the rain garden because it have to do with the permeability of the soil how fast water can trickle through the soil and then also along with that. Good bye. The area that you can allow a rain garden can be built in your yard or whatever and so they go hand in hand because the rain gardens need to filter the water in. In less than two days supposedly

And so if your water isn't or if you thought it was impervious enough then you need to either make the rain garden larger or treat what you can and allow for an overflow. So it may only be able to partially treated. There are other ways of actually extracting it. They have high clay content to the soil that person happened to have in their backyard to actually dig out some of that soil and replace it with a sandy earth soil mixture that will hold more soil or hold more water rather and allow it. To percolate give it a little greater surface area and be almost a reservoir temporarily. Clay soils and heavy soils in general live in especially if they're compact it can be problematic with rain garden so that's why it's really really important to have the soil in an area that you might be considering a rain garden not only for what kind of soil is that is that high stand high clay or somewhere in between. But

also how compacted it is and to go down there a few feet not just to check it at the surface but actually get down because it's at the deeper depths in the soil that really count as well or infiltration of that water. So what's happening to the water if it's going hitting the clay for instance what's it doing and it just filters into the soil very very much more slowly than it would stay in a sandy soil. We had one garden where we were going to college was actually a parking lot runoff that was almost pure clay. Almost all very very low infiltration rate of water. And we actually did excavate out two and a half feet of that Clay hauled it off site and then put into it that whole mixture of about 75 percent sand and 25 percent compost and planted into that.

And so it acts the pore spaces in between those particles actually there are a reservoir. It increases the surface area somewhat of the area that then can filter into the surrounding clay. But the rate is much much lower. And so we had to make very certain that we had an adequate overflow so that the plants wouldn't be drowned out you know large rain event. So how do you actually design something that sounds a lot more complicated than just starting off through a few plants and if you're in you know fairly sandy soil Sandy loamy soil in there. It's almost that simple. The more heavy soil the more landing you have to do. And oftentimes bring an engineer on board to help design. There are some other options that I won't go into because they make it infinitely more complex but having to use under drains and those

sorts of things. But those are available for places where there are just really heavy clay soil and a lot of water coming off where you can actually get the filtering aspect of the soil that you've added in the garden. But maybe not the infiltration rate that you would that you would want. And so the water kind of comes out a pipe at the bottom of the rain garden rather than go into the ground. I can see the application for businesses whether it's you know a grocery store or some other retail store where there's to be there are the really large rough and maybe an adjacent parking lot. So there's kind of some big water issues so there might actually need somebody to design this to be the most effective. Absolutely when you're dealing with that size I would get an engineer's opinion good and design and file path and the whole the whole package.

Yeah. So it is the Minnesota extension. Do any of that kind of assistance for people. We don't do the engineering part of it. We certainly can help with the plant selection. Give folks an introduction the rain garden to combat them decide what avenue they might want to go down whether they have that type of soil where they can do it themselves or whether they have the type of soil that they would want to talk with an engineer and then also to have the vocabulary and general knowledge to be able to talk with those engineers so they can communicate what they'd like to see happen out there and some of their concerns. So we don't actually do that for people. But we will you know help walk them through. We have done a few rain garden as a workshop for people I think that you know how to do it yourself but with hands on experience. So that is another option in those. We do some we help design engineers have designed and we did

help in the plan and some of the other Peter. When you're talking about it. An engineer how is that different from a landscape contractor as it seems. Good question I guess it depends what certification and training does the landscape contractor has. They could have an engineering background at what it does is that enable them to calculate out. They all but the numbers of the volume of water coming off the infiltration rate how big it needs to be whether they need to use the soil under drain the engineered soil with an under drain or not and usually for larger sites where you're going to need big equipment to come in perhaps and do that sort of thing and they would need an engineers plan then a survey and in that sort of

thing to actually get the grading appropriate and that would be for a larger site for a smaller site. Landscape contractor or even the property owner might be able to just do it themselves. You mentioned I'm attending a workshop is that there's any Coming up here from Cook County. Well I've talked with the extension person up there and we'd like to get something going for this fall in classic fashion which is basically a three hour session goes over in much more detail what we're talking about this morning Paula. And then we were also hoping maybe we could find a site and do it installation in 2009. Oh I don't know that it's not you know carved in stone right yet but we're talking and hope to get them on the record. Yeah. If folks are interested in having that happen or being involved in that they can contact Diane booth or County Community extension here in

grammarian County and her phone number is to an 8 3 8 7 3 0 1 5. Again it's to him booth at the cook. An extension. And that be it would be fun. Oh it is fun. Yeah because unless it's the Greenlee large which I usually don't like to tackle for workshops we can get the whole project done in one day and it's with amazing from start to finish to see that transformation when you have half a dozen 10 12 people there helping and then it's a learning experience that I've heard often times from people they attend that classroom part of the workshop and then we're and we're thinking about it we're thinking about it I don't know. And then they attend they actual planting part of it with the handgun and then they have the confidence the knowledge they see how it all fits together and they get really revved up and I'm going to go home and do one of these that you've been you know attitude so it's really fun to see the result and then to see that people

walk away knowing then how to do it. Having had the experience then asked a question along the way that might come up while you're dolling up. People are considering installing a rain garden. How do they decide how big to make it. That gets back to some of the talk elation where you're looking at what area of impervious surface be the roof or driveway. Your trying to capture the water from and then figure out normally that calculation is the one inch rain event although Northstar has as experienced otherwise this summer already but normally a one inch rain event is the calculation that we use. And from there you take that information and add to that the rate that water will percolate into your soil. And that was the perfect path to point to

basically folks. You can have that done or you can take. Cylinder cold coffee and whatever PVC pipe is what we use and actually drive it into the ground and pour water in it and then sit back and see how quickly that water filters into the soil and use that rake in combination with the volume of water to calculate what the area needs to be. And if that area especially in clay soil is too large then you make something that the size that you find a lot for a rain garden and then the rest needs to be accommodated by an overflow. They won't actually be able to capture 100 percent of the runoff in that case but most of it for a good part of it whatever you capture is better than not at all. So without it it's really difficult to explain anyways and over there in

conversation is even more difficult I'm not going to go there but those are the pieces you need to put that all together just shape to make a difference. You know we usually think of the surface area that you need from those calculations and then figure out a shape that works for you. Sometimes as in the parking lot you're confined by between the two halves of the parking lot. Do you have a long linear shape. If you're in a backyard situation sometimes you might be influenced by the topography in your backyard and have it run can be teardrop shaped or kidney shaped or long and kind of linear or oval I mean you can you can choose whichever make sense cording to the progress being in your yard and personal preference. Yeah that's true. Talking about testing an area I determine what the percolation rate is and maybe you said this and I missed it and if so I'm

sorry. Did you dig a hole specifically and how deep does a rain garden have to be. Well the rain garden depending upon what source you go to it should not be deeper than APM inches according to one story 12 inches according to another source. So in that foot foot and a half maybe even half a foot range there are very shallow depression and you would want to have the soil approximately from that bottom. Love the rain garden gravel and so if you're going to have to remove a little bit of soil you would want to dig down that far and that you're testing actually the soil at the bottom of the rain garden as it might exist in the future. And so it that would be my recommendation. Sometimes that's possible sometimes not. I also usually take a core drive a metal cylinder down in there the special

tool and just see what the profile is there's some really interesting bio profiles that the glaciers left behind are that developers been. Big earth moving equipment has changed on the landscape so it's good to get an idea of soil or like that for up to two to three feet and just see what's happening in the surface and the subsurface soil. There was one night we were we actually weren't doing a rain garden but we were doing our land buffer and there was like eight inches of band two inches a clay and other aid into the sand another two inches of clay and you just never know you would know better from the surface that you had all those clay layers down there that will hold water. And so we went from a real dry species selection to more of a wetland be the selection for the plant at that site and it would be similar in a rain garden you you need to know what they are and what you're working with. And down

to two to three feet at least. The thought of trying to do a core sample here in Cook County down two to three feet would be lucky. You'd be lucky if you could get down how many interns. Well it depends. That brings up another question too. If you're having runoff problems and you know maybe you've got a little bit of soil on top and then eight inches down you've got some bedrock there some solutions for that situation. Bedrock is stuff built their soil or doesn't fill their water very well and it's oftentimes fractured which is where the water and seeping into fairly filtered because of the shallow soil. So I would imagine that rain gardens on the North Shore are going to be a challenge in certain areas. And if there are folks that are lucky enough to have a little bit greater top soil that would be better something to work with. But keep in mind that the oil and will filter and plants will remove

water. So does having an area that educated the more surface area to that vegetation the more water those plants will remove be a transpiration. There have been some areas where we've had real low kind of clay soil and just pure clay down and it could be in northwestern Minnesota and kind of a grassy swale and we wanted to get as many shrubs and trees in there because they will draw more water out. We weren't relying as much on filtering the water and allowing it to get into the groundwater table because in clay that's very difficult very slow process but rather rely on plants to draw the water out and transpire it into the air. And so that's another way of lessening the runoff part of it to get the plant to do the job for you maybe more so than the soil at that point in time because the infiltration

rate was so incredibly low. I know that God never thought of it that you might want Marine guard after a greater surface area. I shrugged. Trees are more water you don't care about rain garden you know. We're speaking with Mary book and her northern gardening this morning. And you're listening to Thursday's broadcast. And since then it's afternoon but you're welcome to call in with questions 3 8 7 10 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7 talking about rain gardens. And we're going to take a quick little musical break we'll be back too. We've got one caller who's got a question and we'll talk a lot more about some of the plants and recommendations or just start to talk touch on that we'll be right back with Northern gardening. But.

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Right. Right right. Right. Right right right right right. Right right. Right right. Right. Well Tony Trischka here northern gardening I mean host policy supported northern gardening comes from superior lumber. In sports a full sized lumber and hardware store located in one mile east of Grantham or a spear lumber and sports locally owned offers a wide range of garden supplies patio furniture and outdoor cooking grills. More information available at 3 8 7 1 7 7 1 in support in northern gardening also comes from Evergreen originals greenhouse located at 16 Skye Portland in Grand Marais evergreen originals greenhouse specializes in annual sales and perennials for our northern climate also offering veggies herbs and a wide selection of hanging baskets tubs implanters

information is available in person or at 3 7 2 8 6 2. Very booking to her as our guest today on Northern. She's talking with us about rain gardens she's at University of Minnesota extension educator out of Grand Rapids works with statewide and we had a collar question from a caller. And again folks if you've got questions you can call us at 3 8 7 10 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7. Somebody wanted to know will Mary about recommend a plants for for both clay and sandy loam rain gardens. Really very different situation so maybe we should just go over what plants you recommend for gardens under those kind of different circumstances. The plant selection for rain garden has evolved as the rain garden science and experience has evolved here in the last maybe 5 10 years. I noticed some of the earlier species list that were coming out of various sources recommended all wetland plants for the rain garden. The filming

that they were going to be really wet. However in sandy soils I always recommend people to plan for the what the soil what the plants would experience in between those rain events because in sandy soils that rain is going to go right through the soil in a very short period of time and then if there is none then another rain event for a week two weeks three weeks then they're actually going to be experiencing some drought in the meantime. So it sounds kind of like an oxymoron but in some of these rain gardens in sandy soils we actually recommend dry prairie beasties. That's more what the popular term knows you're escaping for real dry currents for real dry. Yeah and correct and they're escaping might even be really really dry if you. Getting into the cacti and those calling them things they wouldn't necessarily be recommended for rain. I haven't tried them but if folks want to try find the you think about the desert

area a lot of times the rain that comes is yeah kind of big event and then nothing for a long time that it's gone. Yeah it's gone and we probably wouldn't have that a dream in northern Minnesota here but we would have maybe prairie like you know dreams. Yeah and it seems like the weather is getting more and more matter of extremes or rather I don't know. With all of the storms and the rain events that we've had here in the last couple years. So that's kind of a general approach. So if you have real clays at the oil chances are that ground is going to stay moist in between those rain events and then yes you would plan for wetland type b c there is some beautiful. Shrubs trees and shrubs that can go in there. You've got your red ochre dogwood high bush cranberry Mandy Berry by the meadow sweet. I'm

naming off a lot of native plants. Those are the ones I am most familiar with and usually work with. That's not to say that cult of ours that are adapted to what are you focused on three over there. That's me or for your starving like what for. Yeah you have to consider one is that if you go to the cult the cult of ARS then you need to take into account the the hardiness zone as well as the moisture level and the shade. What kind of sun exposure DIOSA. Think about because some of these are some of the most beautiful rain gardens that enough bench a garden and it's just a little bit more challenging to find plants that do well and both burn would be good for that. Sure. So there are a lot of possibilities. Yeah it's nice to see if you have a clay soil it's nice to include at least some shrubs in there because they're going to extract a greater amount of water than the flowers and grasses are. But they will all contribute

some of the flowers that would just start to knock out gorgeous in the garden. It would be like the marsh milkweed in New England after these weed those last two would be purple and yellow in the fall of bone that is blooming right now and is still high weeds. You could even get blue flag Iris to grow in their blue Vervain. They're just a whole list of plants that normally grow in wet areas that are knockout gorgeous and that Ted has I would include some of the grasses and edges you know clumps of those and add a nice texture. Does having a garden as well and are really appropriate for those. And also have usually a little bit deeper and denser written down than some of the flowers do. As far as how much water they're taking up is there a ratio for the various different plants and

even shrubs if there is I don't know the actual ratio but I have done some reading that is quoted. There were a couple references to trees mature deciduous trees that will transpire between 80 and 200 gallons of water a day. Oh that's a lot of water here and that would be you know a full size mature deciduous tree with all the beef area the surface area is made of surface area. Obviously shrubs flowers and grasses are going to be much less than that but it's still a lot of water a lot more than we would imagine. No wonder our woodland areas dry out so swiftly in the spring. Oh yeah absolutely yeah. Yeah into rain doesn't quite do it. Oh wow. But yeah they're so it's not only the soil and the moisture conditions but also the sun and shade and then how much water you want to drop out of there I would

go to some of your larger wood a year be rubbed in trees if you're actually having. The problem with getting the water to filter through. Then they can take it a little bit more of it out of the top of the garden rather than poking it through. So things like will or some of the most maple or some of the other. I guess we can look at some of our weather areas around here and identify the plants. Yeah yeah yeah. Is there a list of extension or do you have a recommendation of some varieties that people can take a look I don't I don't believe we have one at a convention I do hand one out at our workshops and I could email that to you or Today on BURDEN OF A basic spec if you don't want to just want to call in to her. There are also a number of other resources out there. Wisconsin Extension has a range garden book that has recently been almost ready to feed their past but there is a

newer rain garden book that's put out here in Minnesota by the group collaborative accuse me of a multiple organization and there are three authors that put this together based on their experiences with regard to that actually has a more extensive list along with pictures of the flowers and death. That's a nice one too. It's a book it's a book and can be purchased at can. On line I think at Amazon that is one place where it's being sold. LR there's that territory to culture books in the metro area that also sells can mailorder individual copies and has by the group blue salmon It is called the Blue Thumb guide to rain garden and lose some of the recently organized group of landscapers. Different agencies

native plant nurseries all those sorts of people that deal with the landscaping keeping the water clean and it covers rain garden and SAR land buffers and native plant gardens and that sort of in that realm in a lot of resources. That is probably a really really good source of plant information. They actually in addition to the book itself fun rain garden have a plant selector database where you plug in the your situation there are three or four parameters what the sun conditions are like the soil conditions whether you are considering trees shrubs grasses flowers that sort of thing and it will create a list of plants that will satisfy those conditions. So it's a really nice feature. And that's actually on the web. Blue Dot org. Just looked it up. You have some dot org forward slash rain gardens.

Well if you look down there somewhere toward the bottom there's a fleck your plant and then you click on that and you get to that database and then you have to say whether you're selecting it from rain garden or shore land buffers. And actually there isn't a whole lot of difference between the two but it's a great help and that I believe is mostly native plants if not entirely native plants. Yeah because that's kind of what that course is promoting. Yeah yeah that's a really nice way to access. Yeah again that's blue dot org forward slash Marine Corps and thank you so you just look at booth or just for fun too. Yeah yeah there's a lot of information in there you know. Well what about you know or is it talking about water that's coming off the roof or wherever. What about rain barrels. Oh they're fun. That's another feature in this whole storm water control sort of chain of

things that people can put together and there's a really interesting book that I was just reading that Frank and I think it's a British author because it features a lot of. We could deal with stormwater creative ways to deal with storm water over in Europe but rain Gardens is one of them and they showed some just beautiful rain gardens. But then there are several other things that people can actually drink together to form a sequence of these water capturing mechanisms and rain barrels is usually close to the top of the lift and so rain barrels think it's something probably a lot of our grandparents great grandparents used to capture water way back when it has gone out of style and now more recently has come back again and again it captures roof runoff primarily and which temporary hole temporarily holds it which then reduces the flooding features and that sort of thing down stream and the big benefit there is

that it can be used then to water yard plants. And it's probably a lot more healthy for those plants than well water to have contained some of the minerals It's already warm and so it's a really nice thing to do. There are. Several features of rain barrels that I've I really look for and I encourage people if they're considering either making one or purchasing one that that they look forward to and a lot of this is based on trial and error with heavy on the air. You can read rain barrel pamphlets an ad from southern states and whatever and you get a little different twist up here in northern Minnesota but I can just briefly describe those features for you I think you can get the picture yourself but as you

have your storm down about your gutter and then you're down about there and you want that to empty into feature and be filtered. So something on the top of the rain barrel that has a screen on it. Number one to filter out any leaf be whatever debris coming out of that downed wood and probably even more important is to prevent the speedos from laying eggs on the water surface. So it does. Become a mosquito hatchery and I had a fellow that did a make your own sort of rain barrel and it was one of those emergency calls you know what do I do at their vetoes. You know just flying out of my rain barrel and I asked him why he ended up cutting the top off but putting again and then when they expected a rain they'd ripped the whole top up and the downspout would go directly in there with no filtration. And I was trying to figure out over the phone how how the mosquitoes were getting in there if you had the lid on it and then you explained it like that all you did when it's open the mosquitos get

in there is or lay their eggs. So you just need to put a screen over that. Yeah and there are a bunch of different ways to do that. The ones that come pre-made usually have that in there the good ones do and so some sort of a screen to filter down water before it gets in the rain barrel is good and then you can empty that out if you get roofing granules or whatever seeds and other organic debris and then you want a spicket fairly close to the bottom for a hose attachment to get the most water out of your barrel. I find it also a nice addition to put a spigot about halfway up for it easily filling sprinkling cans and then sort of thing and you can drain down half the barrel using that ticket and then you have to go to that ticket at the bot. That you have a real handy feature. Usually you would like them set up some sort of stand that you

that lowers the ticket isn't coming auto right into the ground so you can get something under it and actually attach the hose to it. So setting it up on a few cinder blocks or making a little base board is a good option and then the most important if it gently Is that close to your house is the overflow. Because as I said your 90 story roof will build one of those rain barrels in a 1 inch range. Yeah that is amazing it is and so the overflow can either go to someplace where it's not going to create a water problem way from your foundation or it can actually go to another rain barrel you can imagine the rain barrels in series and get one hundred ten gallons rather than 55 or however many you want to fill depending upon. On the yard you want to water so the overflow goes to either another rain barrel or a safe place where it can. The water can be filtered and flowed and settle into the

ground elsewhere in your yard where it isn't going to cause a problem especially in your basement. And that oftentimes that's where you have to kind of be careful. Oftentimes there's just a hose size attachment a five eighth inch or whatever attachment. And if you think about it in a downpour that volume of rain that's coming out of your downed. If that if your rain barrels filled have to virtually equal the overflow or you start getting water gushing out the top of your rain barrel and five eighths inch hole is attachment it's not going to cut it. You need something larger than that and so I usually use. You can buy actually a kit or sump pump hole. Oh sure it has all the attachments. How to get it in and it works very well with the rain barrel and so I've retrofitted and drilled that hole bigger or added an additional hole and kept the hole there for even more overflow capacity and then there's a 20 foot black

plastic cone that goes with that but that one into one and a half inch diameter can move a lot more water in a storm event than that old attachment so that's really important and that can be there like I said flow into another rain barrel or flow to another part of the yard where it isn't going to create a problem. Yeah yeah the one thing you like you can just move another one into place because these rain barrels are really heavy. You can't really you will be ah yeah. And then they're going when they're full of water yeah yeah you get a hole and drain them and then move them yeah yeah that's what I meant is it full of water you know I just well let's pick this up and slide you know put another one in its place. Make sure you get in the right place. Be other thing is that for our northern winters when the temperatures start dipping into the freezing category you need to take that rain barrel off line in other words find another direction for that water to

go away from the house. Perhaps the original path of the Down here not so because you don't want that rain barrel filling with water and freezing it could crack and damage the rain barrel permanently and then it takes forever in the spring for it to thaw. Oh can you tell this is. Happened to me personally I thought I had the water redirected but I didn't catch it in time. So I had part of a rain barrel full of ice and couldn't move it in. Hello dear. Interesting situation. It's also a good time in the fall to clean them out. Pollen oftentimes will make its way into the rain barrel into should give it a scrub. Keep it clean and can either flip it upside down or put it in the garage where it's not going to go with water and can cause problems. Frozen lump of ice would kind of defeat the purpose of having pre warmed water in your plants too. Yeah yeah yeah they do. But there there really.

Last year we had several drought periods at least here in Grand Rapids in between several major rain events and it was amazing I was able to capture enough water and I have a double rain barrel if I have to in theory and was able to capture enough rainwater to keep all of my plants from alive from one rain event to the other with those rain barrels which is really nice because I didn't have to get into the groundwater and the other thing before I forget here. I talked about that overflow from the rain barrel and the fact that this fellow this British author was talking about cooking some of these features up into theories so that overflow could from a rain barrel could actually feed a rain garden. Oh. Nice OK. And so then you have your water in your rain barrel that water your other plants in the yard and then if there's excess it is best if you only want one rain barrel and you have more roof areas then that barrel can capture in a one inch rain. Then you can take that overflow and direct it to your rain garden.

So is this a book research that you have or do you call a name or. Well I have it here yeah it's called rain garden managing water sustainably in the garden and designed landscape just called that say that again. Yeah I saw the fine print below it rain garden this and then the fine print below says managing water sustainably in the garden and designed landscape. And the author Nigel Dunn It is the first doctor and then an be clade then the second. And I'm going to have it in front of me actually let me see what the timber press OK. People should be able to find that that's not a 2007 copyright on it. So it's a very recent thing and just a really really creative ways of doing that as especially in more urban situations but also the country backyard gardener too.

Yeah. Oh. I like that concept of using the rain barrels as well especially as we look at you know drought times in between for watering that's a great to be able to use the rain that's already there as opposed to pumping water from your well or from a lake or when you're in a city the city water is expensive so why not use what's falling out of the sky. Yeah and the water often time and again that it is the chlorine or Florian or whatever that isn't real good for plants too. Yeah you know yeah. How about the containers themselves. What have you got to say about those. They need to be food grade so something that that is contained in edible sometimes you get a pickle barrel or perhaps a cola concentrate barrels. They're usually large and white or bright blue or some obnoxious colors black. But they need to be food grade so they have to have had something edible you don't want any

nasty chemicals that have been in there that might be chewed out so they're like you can describe it out and clean it you really get sucked into the plastic I guess. Yeah I would advise if you think that that's what's been recommended and highly recommended and I don't have any you know research paper that I can refer to but the folks that advocate for rain barrel say you know really make sure it's food grade and there are sources out there and the other thing that I've seen used is what barrel the old Sure would. Yeah and they get an oak barrel or something and they can be very attractive. The problem I think for most people with the rain barrels is they don't like this great blue thing sitting out in their yard you know in those plastic barrels can be painted deer and painted attractively if you have kids they can have a lot of fun but it has been butterflies in that honor that will scrape off you.

Would eventually Oh yeah I think if you lightly sanded it it might adhere better. Correct that sounds like a little bit of a chart. No it yet if you did you could do that in in a few minutes and I sure will help it here you're absolutely right. But it also you have to be careful because if you bump it are great but with a hard object it can comfortably come off about like it soaked in the wood. But you could build a wood frame for it or even I would be a lot of painted it and then put lattice around the outside of it right. Maybe work to put right and there are some commercially available ones that are actually a baby tonight earthy babies kind of can color that aren't of noxious like those bright white or blue ones out there and those were intended to be that way so that people wouldn't have to paint them but those are also on the higher end of the price range and usually they hold more water. They're into 100 gallons rather than a hybrid in the

70 you know 70 to 100 gallons so they are usually a little bit larger and not always but I think the other thing is to just Google rain barrels and you'll find all kinds of courses and again remember the features that I mentioned because not all of them have those. Whether you build it yourself with can and there is actually the ramp the Washington Metro watershed district has a great brochure on line. For building your own with several different options for creating a screen in the top depending upon what kind of burial you know you buy and all of the other that include the sump pump hole and that's right I got that idea or allusion to that share of the They've they've obviously done their homework on this and try to come up with some real great solutions that you can get at the local hardware store you don't have to go elsewhere the biggest thing there is locating a barrel. Yeah they're usually between 15 and 20 bucks you could find some of those somewhere on

the land. Again making sure it's food grade something portable in the container. Yeah yeah that's good. Well we're kind of running out of time here Mary we have to wrap it up but I really appreciate having you join us we've been speaking with Mary block interfer she's a University of Minnesota. Extension educator out of Grand Rapids works for the whole state and gardens and rain barrels. Thank you Mary very very much for joining us today on Northern gardening. Thank you college. Yes it has and we'll hope to have you back on sometime again. Appreciate it look forward to it. And folks again you're listening to Northern gardening it's a live broadcast on Friday rebroadcast Thursday at 4 o'clock if you've got gardening questions or topics that you'd like to hear. Give us a ring at 3 8 7 10 a 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7 I've been your host Paula send it. Thanks so much for joining us on Northern gardening. Stay tuned for the calendar program.