Perhaps it was simply the idea behind putting peanut butter and chocolate together that made it all seem so plausible. However it occurred, it did appear quite natural to have the water that is used to feed our plants carry with it as many nutrients as possible. That is the idea behind some of the sprayer approaches of distributing fertilizers and growth formulas.

While tossing a cup or two of MiracleGro into a rain barrel would be straight forward, it didn’t seem very natural; I mean nature has been decomposing living matter for a lot longer and those nutrients all get carried by groundwater to plant life on its own.  So it would stand to reason that perhaps composting and rain barrels had more of a relationship than they have been used for  - historically.    Admittedly many magazines, trade journals and Internet site discuss the aspects to rain barrel harvesting and composting in the same article, but leveraging the two didn’t seem apparent.

What is the big deal?

In fact, this probably isn’t composting at all but rather plan old decomposing. If you look at this other post, it becomes easier to understand that composting creates a bio-thermic reaction when decomposing. A large reason for this breaking down deals with available oxygen provided while this bio-thermic reaction is taking place. The thinking here is that decomposing in water reduces the level of oxygen used and removes the chance for any bio-thermic reaction.   Which leaves the question of what is going to breakdown this recyclable plant life into a water soluble (or water carried) nutrient and how will we provide oxygen to help these little guys do their work.

What is clear is that ponds have been breaking down and decomposing matter quite readily. The recipe there includes all the insects, fish and wildlife you can shake a stick at but what is the most efficient to put in a barrel.

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