We must all be self sufficient

[Flo]

Not a new topic raised for a week at least. Everyone must be set in their ways, completely self sufficient and have no need of advice. Surely someone somewhere has a new and novel question????

[ina]

Not me - just too tired after work every day to think of anything else but sleep...

[Odsox]

I've been busy trying to get everything done before the winter starts.
I managed to re-roof one of my big sheds, ripping off the leaky felt and plywood, and replacing it with corrugated iron. I've got another smaller shed to do the same to, but I need a dry, windless, preferably cloudy day, and I'm still waiting.
I also hope to get some concreting done, at least a concrete pad by each polytunnel door, or better still a proper path all the way to the barn. It get awfully muddy at the tunnels doorways in winter.
Plus waiting for the swallows to vacate the garage, then I can clear it out so that Mrs Odsox can get her car in there.
So ..... nowhere near finished yet.

[Green Aura]

....and I've just had the visitors from Hell and developed a cold. So rather than being self-sufficient I'm being grumpy and needy.

[BernardSmith]

Okay, I'll take the bait. My yard in upstate NY is small and I try to grow some vegetables on a few raised beds (potatoes, onions, basil, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes etc. To grow them efficiently I need to water the plants regularly but to water them I need to use a fair amount of water tapped from my house or use collected rain water. Collecting rain water means that I attract mosquitoes and mosquitoes here may be infected with zika and other pathogens which then infect humans. My question: to be self sufficient is there an effective way to collect rain water while discouraging insects that prefer standing water without adding chemicals to the water that is then transferred to my vegetables?

[Weedo]

Bernard
Try floatiing oil on the water (olive canola etc.) Mozzie wrigglers (and others that hatch into air breathers) need to breath from the surface - the oil layer creates a barrier that stops them from reaching air. The old technique was to use Kerosine but any floating oil should work.

[Odsox]

I agree with what Weedo said.
A more permanent solution is maybe what I have.
I collect all the rainwater from my barn roof which is then stored in 2 x 1000 litre IBCs (Industrial Bulk Containers) which can be totally sealed with screw lids. Mine are plumbed with ball (float) valves so that when the first one is full it then fills the 2nd.
The screw on lids are slightly open to release the vacuum when I pump the water out to irrigate my polytunnels, other than that there is no way any mosquito could get in or out.

[BernardSmith]

I like both solutions, but I think I will try the oil solution largely because I don't have a roof from which I can easily collect water: a barrel will be collecting from the rain as it falls from the sky so I cannot think of any sound way to seal this barrel so that it would create a barrier to mosquitoes.