Texas Gardening: can rain barrel water be "bad"?, 1 by sweezel

sweezel wrote:
I have four 60 gallon rain barrels (and just bought a fifth but fancy rain barrel yesterday) and occasionally the water looks a little murky, but it does not seem to hurt. All my plants, especially my houseplants, love the water.

As far as keeping the mosquitos out, I use window screen. You can buy a roll (get the aluminum kind) from walmart. If the rain barrel has a removable top, you can put the screen under it (I use gorilla glue). If the top does not come off, use a strap or something to wrap it around the top.

I attached a couple pictures. The picture on the right is of the better type of rain barrel that had a screw top (it was a pickle container). The picture on the left is of my rain barrel that I cut under the lip to make a removable top (also had to cut the whole in the top of this one) . The "top" was then flipped so it would sit down on the barrel.