Make Your Garden More Resilient with a Rain Barrel
June 20, 2022
Humans have been capturing rain to water their animals and crops since the dawn of agriculture. Before climate change, weather patterns may have been more predictable, but that didn’t mean that they were always compatible with crop production.
Rainwater capture helped ensure that people, animals, and plants had the water they needed between rains and in times of water scarcity and drought. Ancient civilizations built basic cisterns in Neolithic times, and later developed more complex methods for collecting and moving water, such as in Crete and the Roman Empire.
Today, rainwater harvesting can take many forms, and in the U.S., generally takes place at the household level. While some people may opt for complex systems that filter and purify rainwater and make it safe for drinking, most get started with a simple and effective and cheap technology: the rain barrel.
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