This is a guest post written by Amy Lizee from Environment911.org:

Rainwater harvesting is not something that is new to society. In fact, “the oldest evidence of roof catchment systems date back to Roman times. Roman villas and even whole cities were designed to take advantage of rainwater as the principal water source for drinking and domestic purposes since at least 2000 B.Cs” ¹

However, as society developed and evolved, the use of rainwater become less and less. Although individuals in the agricultural segment use rainwater to grow their crops and feed livestock, it has been almost completely forgotten in the urban setting.

While rainwater harvesting can be a complex process with high-tech systems, it can also be a simple barrel with a secure lid. Regardless of which form of catchments you choose to use, switching to rainwater provides many benefits to yourself and the environment.

6. Provides a healthier source of water

Rainwater is a naturally pure source of liquid. As it has not gone through any municipal treatment centers or filters, it remains free of chlorine, pesticides and dissolved minerals. This makes it a very good option especially for individuals on low sodium diets or any one with weak immune systems.

5. Water conservation and reducing water demand

Individuals who use harvested water are playing a part in water conservation, which is one of the most important environmental concerns of today. Although the majority of the Earths surface is covered in water, only 2.5% is fresh water and fit for consumption. Of this, “1.6% of the earth’s fresh water is trapped in glaciers and polar ice, which leaves less than 1% in our lakes, rivers and streams for human consumption”. ²

By harvesting rainwater, you are using less municipal water and thereby, reducing your urban consumption. In turn, you are also reducing water demand by removing one home or part of a home from the urban water plate.

4. Supplement municipal water in time of low availability

Linking to the first point, in times of drought or low water supply, homes that harvest rainwater are able to supplement their regular water source during droughts and low availability or even during storms and power outages.

3. Can be used to divert rainwater to toilet flushing or other functions

Not all homes harvest rainwater for the purpose of drinking and bathing, but luckily there are many other areas in which rainwater can be a useful supplement for municipal water sources. For example, rainwater can be harvested and used for lawns or gardens, agricultural fields as well as flushing toilets or doing laundry. Many people don’t realize how much water these daily activities can take up. In fact, “landscaping, laundry and flushing toilets account for up to 75% or more of fresh water used in the average home”. ³ By switching some of your regular activities to rainwater, you will reduce your urban consumption as well as your carbon footprint.

2. Reduce storm drainage loads

This is perhaps the single most important environmental effect of harvesting rainwater. Since a storm drain lacks a filter, untreated storm water often finds itself in varies bodies of water. This has a huge impact on our environment because some of the most common storm drain pollutants included: motor oil and fuel, litter, paint and paint thinners, household cleaners and fertilizers. All of these pollutants affect wildlife and many of them do not breakdown naturally. So, by reducing storm drainage loads, pollution is declined, thereby reducing the impact to our natural plants, wildlife, rivers, streams and oceans.

1. Save money

The usage of water in your home requires energy, which we pay for. When you reduce the usage of urban water in and around your home, you are also reducing the energy costs associated. In some cases, this means a 35-40% savings on your annual household water bill! If the environmental and health benefits didn’t get you, I am sure this one will!

“All the water that will ever be is, right now.” – National Geographic, October 1993

Now that you are aware of the benefits to rainwater harvesting, I am sure it seems like a much more colorful option then it did before. While switching over might seem like a big change, the benefits far outweigh any negative impact.

There are hundreds of ways that we can save the environment each and every day, but all of them require change in the way we do things and the way we view the world around us. By taking what Mother Nature has given and using it in its most natural form, we are connecting to nature and protecting it for future generations.

Environment911.org is an interactive website for individuals to come and discuss the environment from green business to natural disasters. We feel it is important for people to come together and share their thoughts, ideas and visions for the future. The more we can communicate what is happening in our world, the more people can be educated and the more we can progress. Beyond Environment911.org you can find us on Facebook and Twitter where we are continuing to spread the message about our global environment and the impact that we have on it every day. www.environment911.org

1) http://www.crd.bc.ca/water/conservation/outdoorwateruse/recycling/harvesting.htm
2) http://www.gutterdoc.ca/rain-water-harvesting/
3) http://www.tieswithnature.ca/rainwater-harvesting/rain-water-benefits/

The first thing to do when you notice a not so healthy looking plant is to find out exactly what is going on, so that you can begin you search for the cure. Below is a list of symptoms together with possible causes to get you going on your quest to grow the best possible tomatoes. Try doing a Google image search once you get an idea of what your tomato plants are trying to tell you, and see if it looks like what you’re seeing on your own tomato plant leaves.

Discolored leaves

Yellow

As you can see below, a yellow coloring of your tomato plant leaves can be caused by many different things. The color yellow either covers the entire leaf, is limited to patches or limited to just spots, depending on the cause:

• A lack of nitrogen affects the lower leaves. It spreads to the upper leaves.
• A lack of calcium affects the upper leaves
• A lack of manganese is rare, but will result in dead patches on the leaves, ringed in yellow
• Wilt diseases can cause a shortage of nutrients, which will then result in a discoloring of leaves
• Fusarium Wilt affects older leaves
• Verticillium (Verticillium dahliae)
• Leaf spots (Early Blight or Target Spot)
• Root rot
• Mosaic virus results in mottling
• Aphids
• Spider-mites can cause a white-yellow speckling

Light green

• Too much nitrogen
• A lack of manganese

White

• A lack of iron
• Powdery Mildew results in powdery patches

Black

• Fusarium Crown Rot

Curling leaves

• A lack of potassium affects older leaves
• A lack of iron
• A lack of copper is rare, but results in blue-green flappy leaves
• Curly Top virus affects upper leaves and results in a purple-like color

Spots on leaves

Brown

• Early Blight or Target Spot (Alternaria solani)
• Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans)

Dark

• Bacterial Speck (Pseudomonas syringae)
• Bacterial Spot (Xanthomonas campestris pv vesicatoria)

Purple

• Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans)
• Tomato Spotted Wilt/Impatiens Necrotic Spot Tospoviruses

Wilting leaves

• Fusarium (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici)
• Fusarium Wilt
• Fusarium Crown Rot
• Verticillium (Verticillium dahliae) can result in wilting at midday but recovery at night
• Bacterial wilt (Ralstonia solanacearum)
• Root rot
• Tomato Spotted Wilt/Impatiens Necrotic Spot Tospoviruses (TSWV or INSV)
• Nematodes causes the plant to wilt prematurely
• Walnut toxicity if the plants grow near a walnut tree

Drooping leaves

• Fusarium (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici)
• Fusarium Wilt
• Fusarium Crown Rot

Flies on leaves

• Whitefly (1 mm), more often seen in a greenhouse than out in the open
• Thrips (1 mm), onion thrips (Thrips tabaci) and flower thrips (Thrips obscuratus)
• Fruit fly

Removing some of the leaves

If the problem is that you have too many tomato plant leaves then here are some tips on removing some of the leaves to provide the plants with more sunlight and oxygen:

• Single vine variety: All ‘suckers’ can be removed and staking should first be done after the first flowers appear to create a strong plant.
• Multi-stemmed variety: All stems should have the same size. Any side stems below the first flower cluster can be removed to create a strong main stem.
• Determinate variety: ‘Suckers’ below the first flower cluster can be removed.
• Sterilize knife or scissors between plants, or use your fingers to pinch of unwanted leaves and branches
• Remove branches during dry days to avoid bacteria getting into the ‘wound’ because of rain
• Remove sick leaves and branches to reduce spreading of diseases
• You can reuse any clippings – they will grow into new plants if you stick them into the soil!

Cucumber leaves

I haven’t been able to find any evidence saying that tomato plants can’t rub leaves with cucumbers. I think it’s a myth and more a question about space. Cucumbers grow big leaves, and they could overshadow a tomato plant if the plants were standing close.

While it should be safe to grow cucumbers near tomatoes, there are some plants that are even recommended companion plants for tomatoes, like French marigolds (Tagetes patula), because they deter nematodes. Other plants that act as pest control are:

• Basil
• Chives
• Parsley
• Onions

Source:

How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford

It’s a bit difficult the see the bean plants climbing up the stems, but you can tell that there’s a bean plant in there somewhere because the leaves are light green instead of dark green. The bean plant growing on the tree to the left is even harder to spot since this is a purple bean plant variety.

I planted each bean plant in their own clay pot below the trees:

If I hadn’t used the young trees as bean trellises for runner beans they would probably have been cut down, because they were self-seeded. It turns out that as these trees grew taller they actually shielded my small container garden pretty well from the wind, which is important, or else your tomato plants and cucumber plants might easily be ripped apart during a storm.

A close-up picture of one of the stems clearly shows that there’s a bean plant growing on the stem:

And as usual – the bean plant is growing counter-clockwise around the stem or trellis. And no, it’s not related to your geographical location, i.e. if you’re living on the northern or southern hemisphere.

Small green beans have started to form and more flowers are developing so soon I’ll be able to harvest something for the kitchen!

… But I soon got too annoyed with the empty plant tank and my unreached goal of bringing this beast into production mode, so I went outside an started cutting side branches off my large tomato plants that I’m growing in self-watering containers beneath the south facing wall of the house. I learned from the ebook “How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes” that cuttings from a mature plant will easily grow into new plants if you stick the cuttings into the soil. Fortunately it works with aquaponic coconut fibers too:

The cuttings grew into tall plants, actually a bit taller than I have room for beneath the ceiling. The maximum grow height available in this system is small since the fish tank must be placed beneath the plant tank, and the fish tank in this case is an ordinary aquarium which you what to place on an aquarium table to be able to enjoy the fish without having to lay down on the floor

A quick look at the new tomato plants gives you the impression that they are healthy, and the stems and leaves have a healthy color:

But if you take a closer look at some of the largest tomato plants you’ll find that some of the leaves have wilted:

(WARNING: Oldest aquaponic joke coming up: “I’m sure I gave them enough water…” Ha. Ha.)

I have to find out what’s causing this, and even the small developing tomato flower stems are affected by this too. The leaves turn dry and crispy and turn into dust if you squeeze them.

I wouldn’t say that the submerged roots look particularly healthy:

Rasmus noticed the same brown stuff on the roots of my previous batch of aquaponic plants and recommended adding air bubbles directly to the plant tank. I think it helped back then but I forgot to reinstall the air pump after I cleaned up the plant tank.

Lots of challenges still with this relatively new aquaponics home system in the corner of my living room. And I’m still having wet dreams about adding automatic electronic measurement of pH and conductivity.

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
These plant tanks, or plant grow beds, take up very little space and evaporation losses are very small. The nutrient rich fish water flows through the tubes providing the plants with what they need.

A whole wall has been covered with these plant tubes and connected to large aquaponics fish tanks:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
The fish in my system are also pet fish and live in an ordinary aquarium, so that you can see the fish, but I don’t think the fish actually care whether or not they’re able to look back at the people watching them. And if that’s true you might as well dump the fish in a big black plastic container as shown in the picture above. Just remember that black surfaces absorb energy from the sun and  heat up.

An aquaponic system can be installed anywhere, like for instance right next to a restaurant or hotel to secure an extremely fresh supply of herbs and vegetables:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
The system I built is based on an ebook called Aquaponics 4 You that originated from Hawaii (formerly known as Ultimate Aquaponics Home System) and the University of Waimanalo in Hawaii is experimenting with aquaponics too. Take a look at one of their neat plant tanks, with floats and net pots installed, standing on top of a few layers of cinder blocks:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.

The area is packed with aquaponics tanks, and a solar panel would be a very convenient way of driving your water pump in an outdoor aquaponic system:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
Some kind of marquee placed above your tanks would be a good way to protect your crop against the weather if it’s necessary:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
When you’re building a system and looking for aquaponic supplies you can benefit from all the hydroponic containers on the market already. The large white tank below is from genhydro.com but all the pipes and fittings you could ever dream of is probably also available from the existing hydroponic retailers:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
I grow my aquaponic plants in coconut fiber but many people use LECA balls instead (Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate) – then you won’t need floats and net pots:

Photo by Kanu Hawaii.
Here’s another system installed under a large polytunnel cover, with an artificial fish pond beneath the plant pond:

Photo by Justin Leonard.
The next system has three layers – two layers of watercress beds and a 120 cm deep fish pond (4 feet) at the bottom. The beds are 120 cm wide (4 feet):

Photo by Justin Leonard.
The water circulates slowly through PVC pipes and the watercress filters the water for the fish:

Photo by Justin Leonard.
You can throw as much money as you have at an aquaponics system to keep improving it, but with very little money and reused materials you can get a cheap system up and running. The most expensive part is probably the pump but in small systems it shouldn’t take long to find someone who has a spare that you can have for free.

Photo by hurricanemaine.

Photo by Linda N.
Linda got this raised bed kit from naturalyards.com. I find it interesting because if you look carefully at the lower corner you’ll find a pin sticking out of the wood and I assume that these pins are holding all the planks together in each of the raised bed corners. It’s probably metal pins of some sort. I also find it interesting because you would be able to make one by yourself because of the neat way the planks are joined in the corners. A cut has been made in the end of each plank and you could easily drill the holes yourself. Furthermore it would be easy to replace one of the planks if it deteriorated. It looks like the planks in the sides are joined in the same way. The raised bed is stabilized at the middle with two metal rods from one side to the other.

Photo by mazaletel.
These raised beds are deeper than normal and excellent for root vegetables. The trellis for plants looks nice and matches the raised bed. It would work great as a trellis for peas for example.

Photo by Linda N.
I still dream about building my own raised beds from cinder blocks instead of wood since the blocks will last for a lifetime with no maintenance. The disadvantages are that the cinder block pricing is higher than the wood pricing, and the weight of cinder block is bigger. Usually you plant something in the holes inside the cinder blocks too but in this case the top has been covered with smaller concrete edging blocks, and it looks nice. The trellis to the left is for cucumbers or beans.

(If you’re looking for trellis design plans you should check out my ebook called Bean Trellis Tips, that I’ll send you for free if you sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar to the right. There’s a bunch of DIY trellis pictures in it, to get ideas from.)

Photo by boboroshi.
This is a seriously deep raised bed with nice details on top of each pole. My guess is that the owner has problems with rodents hence the chicken wire along the edges, which ought to keep them from building nests in the bed and eating the root vegetables.

Photo by cogdogblog.
Here’s a combination of natural sandstone and cinder blocks to form a raised garden bed. The holes in the cinder blocks will be used for flowers to attract pollinators. The bed has been fenced off with chicken wire, probably to keep rabbits and other animals out.

Photo by Simply Vicki.
I like these beds because they’re simple to make. Big, raw planks – beautiful.

Photo by jeffmason.
You can also use smaller raw planks and just use two instead of one plank.

Photo by Baugher Webmaster Services.
Square Foot Garden (SFG) in a simple raised bed, with peas, radishes, yellow squash and Geisha Girl flowers.

Photo by JoePhoto.
Many people put down a layer of wet cardboard under their new raised bed. I believe it’s some kind of weed stopper to get your raised bed off to a quick start on top of the lawn. Or on top of whatever plants or weeds were there in the first place.

Photo by nickton.
I just had to add this one because it’s a beauty. I’m not sure if the wood has changed color because it got wet or if this is the natural color. After all, it is covered in hail, in March. Notice the planks on top of the edges which means that you can do the weeding while you’re sitting down on top of the raised bed.

Photo by treesftf.
These people really mean it when they say raised bed – what a comfortable working position! Your back will be grateful. This particular bed is for seedlings only so the bed sides are only half the height of a normal growing bed.

Photo by treesftf.
Who told you that you needed to go buy materials for a raised bed? Pft… Just go old school, with some sticks and large leaves and what have you. Although it has a perfect working height the bed was actually raised to protect the vegetables from leaf cutter ants.

Photo by treesftf.
This is how it all started: When you loosen the soil it will expand in volume and the vegetables will grow faster, bigger and longer. Unless you walk on the soil again, like the kid in the middle of the picture… whoops

A wooden frame around the bed is just to keep the loose soil contained.

(The students are from Rafaela Herrera.)

Photo by JAGwired.
Yeah, why not? Wonder what the kids would say if they found out? And they probably will, since this is a driveway salsa garden, with tomato and pepper plants.

Photo by styro.
Flowers out – vegetables in! Way to go Watch out for tomato thieves though. You have to admire the courage these people have to put vegetables right in front of the neighbors. “That’s not how we normally do things around here.” … and who told you normal is good, you stubborn…

Photo by mazaletel.
A few PVC pipes arched over your raised bed, covered with 4 mm plastic – and you have yourself a high yielding poly-tunnel. (shown to the right, in the back.)

Photo by Baugher Webmaster Services.
When you grow peas you don’t want the birds to eat them before you do, but a floating row cover will prevent just that.

Photo by espring4224.
What a cool way to keep the birds out Indeed cool, since the wind will blow right through the cover. Remember to let the bees in and out though to take care of pollination. Not optimized for a post peak oil world but a creative solution nonetheless.

Photo by USFS Region 5.
No special raised bed designs in this photo, but it just got to me. Handing over the kitchen gardening knowledge first hand to the next generation, helping the kids grow strong and prepared for the new world. Using raised beds for vegetable gardens might be an old trick, but it’s worth knowing about and hopefully we can keep improving the method to provide us with even more of that wonderful high quality food we deserve as human beings.

I decided to grow my beloved potatoes anyway and incidentally I found these Maris Peer seed potatoes at the local nursery:

I don’t think people normally grow this potato variety around here but I recognized the name from forums so I decided to try them out.

Normally I’m chitting potatoes for a couple of weeks. When you do potato chitting make sure the shoots don’t grow too long or they’re likely to break off during planting:

I bought three cheap plastic pots for this purpose – notice the 16 drainage holes in the bottom:

These holes will let the water pass through the soil and prevent rot in tubers and roots caused by water standing still. This will of course mean that you’ll have to water more often. Especially if you use pre-fertilized peat moss like I did, which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best choice:

My new small container garden two months ago – this is a trade-off between space to play on for the kids versus growing space for kitchen gardening:

From the left there are three ceramic containers with new small blueberry bushes, in the middle are my three potato containers / pots, and the two large tubs in the back to the right are for herbs and spices. In the front to the right are three fruit bushes which we donated to the kindergarten.

The potatoes grew big but some of the foliage turned yellow so I decided it was time to harvest the tubers. I would have liked to see flowers develop before harvesting but for some reason they didn’t. Maybe the plants needed some kind of nutrient which would also explain the yellow leaves:

Fortunately the potato tubers were in there, looking healthy!:

I was very happy to find 1.2 kilos of potatoes (2.6 pounds) in those three plastic pots:

The last couple of years we have made the same simple potato salad from our new potatoes.

600 g boiled new potatoes, marinated in these ingredients:

• 1 tsp. garlic, chopped
• 3 Tbls. olive oil
• 1 Tbls. sesame oil
• 3 Tbls. lemon juice
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
• (2-3 spring onions, sliced) (didn’t use it this time though)
• 2 Tbls. sesame seeds as garnish

Yum!

What’s your favorite potato variety? And feel free to add more simple potato recipes you might have, that you want to recommend to others.

The red plastic plate under the lid is just for ventilation to provide oxygen for the seed germination process. I’m using 2 and 3 inch black plastic net pots (5 cm and 7.5 cm) for the aquaponics system, and I’m sowing directly into the net pots:

There are very few nutrients in the coconut fiber material so when the seedlings develop their first true leaves I move them into the aquaponic plant tank where the water is filled with nutrients. This is a good thing about an aquaponics system; you don’t have to replant your seedlings with risk of damaging the roots.

In the beginning I kept a journal of everything I sowed with a serial number on every pot, but it takes a long time to update and since I haven’t got that many different plants in the system I can usually see right away what type of plant I’m dealing with when the seedlings appear, so I won’t be updating the journal anymore. I’ll just focus my energy on getting a truckload of plants through the system instead

The fish in the aquarium connected to the plant tank are thriving. The interior of the tank is beginning to look like a natural environment, although we’re experiencing some really nasty looking algae, with a green synthetic like color. (If you know something about algae classification, please leave a comment below this blog post).

Fish tank and algae pictures:

But the fish seem to be okay with their artificial environment and fortunately they’re algae eating fish.

They’re pumping out fry, actually the third litter in one month. These are some of the blue acara fry, out of a litter of about 200(!):

The plants in the plant tank are doing well too. This is flat leaved parsley stretching for the grow light:

This strawberry plant did provide us with a few strawberries, and sent out a runner which I replanted in a new pot, but then it started to wilt:

I don’t know what happened – I’m sure I gave it enough water. (Get it?… enough water – in the aquaponics system?… Oh I crack myself up sometimes).

But then there’s the chives:

These are the workhorses in the system at the moment, with really long roots, and lots of them.

Note that both the strawberry plants and the chives are from the nursery where they were started in soil, which makes it hard to transfer to an aquaponics system, but we had to get some plants into the plant tank to clean the water for the fish as they where going into the aquarium no matter what. Or, at least Charlotte had a very good opportunity to buy tropical fish of the type she wanted at that particular time.

Both runner and bush beans are growing fast when they are plugged into the aquaponics system:

This is a bush bean type – runner beans are not practical in this particular system as the growing height above the plant tank is limited to 50 cm (20”) because the plant tank is placed just below the ceiling. I’m expecting a good yield from the bush beans and I’m looking forward to seeing the results. It seems like they are growing really well and we haven’t even done any adjustments of the pH value yet.

I can’t help dreaming about a nice big backyard aquaponics system, but after all it’s probably wise to get the basics right before scaling up the system.

The bamboo sticks run all the way to the bottom of the soil tube inside the self-watering container and stabilizes the whole tomato trellis. These kind of bamboo sticks don’t easily rot which is nice since they can be used for several seasons.

The small tomato plants are tied to the bamboo sticks inside the metal cage to keep them steady in the wind:

I’m living in a rented house at the moment so instead of using screws I bent a couple of cable metal holders to fit over the edge of the rain gutter and attached strings down to the bamboo sticks to keep the tomato trellises steady in the wind:

Normally I use bamboo sticks for bean trellises too but why not use the natural environment for bean trellises if you can. I’ve placed two climbing bean seedlings in pots beneath a couple of wild tree shoots hoping the beans will find their way up these two 2 m tall sticks (6 feet):

There’s a giant corkscrew willow growing near the terrace that I plan to use as bean trellis too. A couple of plastic pots with climbing bean seedlings have been placed on the table below the tree:

I’m just looking forward to some sun, heat and rain now