Our New Watering System

In my last blog I talked about how we water most of our gardens using rain barrels ( filled with water piped from our roof) and watering cans.  I have been suggesting to Jerry (he would say whining!) for the last year or so that we need to come up with another method in the future.  We are not getting any younger and with injuries to our wrists and arms in the last years it makes sense to limit the amount of work we have to do.  I have been sending him blogs and websites of how others are managing watering systems with solar panels, pumps etc but he has always had a reason why a system was not practical for our purposes.

One day, last week I see there is a long extension cord from the house down past our gardens.  I figured he was working on piping to the rain barrels but went down to investigate.  Miracle of miracles, he has a small submersible pump that is attached to a hose and he is going to submerge it into one of the barrels.  INSTANT WATER! 

 So easy!  Attach hose to pump, lower into water, plug pump in, start watering garden.  I was SOOOOOOOO happy!  I asked him when he got the pump and his response – it was in our basement ALL THESE YEARS!  He had purchased it when we were building 6 years ago for some one time use.  WHAT!  Last year while he was recovering from hernia surgery and I gave myself a frozen shoulder trying to water in the drought there was a PUMP sitting in our basement!  #*&^. 

For a moment my happiness was gone, but then I stood there watering for a bit and all was forgotten -  it was sooooo nice.  You have time to look at all your plants, look at the property, to check out the little details that you don’t see when you are sweating and running back and forth with watering cans.

Once the one area was watered we moved hose and pump over to the next set of rain barrels. The watering of all the gardens was done in record time.  To make it more efficient we have decided to get hoses that we can leave at each rain barrel station (we have three) and then it is just a matter of moving the pump around. 

The one drawback is our watering spout on the hose gets clogged quickly from the sediment in the bottom of the barrels.  We fixed this by just taking off the shower spout and watering with a stream of water.  We could also just add a brick or something for the pump to sit on in the barrel and then it is not pulling in sediment from the bottom.

We also won't be getting that great arm workout from pulling full watering cans from the rain barrels but with all the jobs to do around the property I have a feeling that I still won't be having to join a gym.

And because we almost always are watering when the sun is out, we are using electricity produced from our solar panels to power the pump. YES!  Crossing “watering system update” off the to do list!

The Great Rain Barrel Dump

It has been very dry - the understatement of the year - 80% less rain in May than normal, little in June, almost none in July - still we consider ourselves lucky that we live in an area that does see  it's share of thunderstorms which enable us to water most of our gardens, most of the time, using rain barrels.  When we built our home we had the foresight to get our septic installers to install pipes from each of the downspouts around the house and pipe the water back into the garden areas - we have three stations quite a distance from the house with multiple rain barrels connected and then two up near the house, front and back for the gardens there - in total we have 11 barrels.  We should probably have 15. 



 Most mornings finds us outside early slogging to water the gardens - we water by dipping in watering cans into the barrels, pulling them out, then walking to the nearby garden and repeat AGAIN and AGAIN.  It is an awesome arm and shoulder workout but can be more than exhausting when the temp hits into the 30's before 9.  Every year I ask Jerry to put in taps or hoses so we would have less work but recently I have been watering a friends garden while they are away and the tap from a rain barrel takes FOREVER to fill a watering can! So we continue the old fashioned, fast way.  

We have run out of water in the barrels a number of times this year and have had to resort to watering with the hose - after the hard labor of the watering cans it is kinda nice to just stand there holding the hose, no upper arm workout, just time spent gazing around but the well water is cold, not good for the plants and it feels like 'wasting' to us when we use the hose.  We try to get every last drop from the rain barrels. 
When the forecast suggests an 80% chance of rain on the way (like they are today) we take a look at our rain barrels and if there is still water in them we do the big rain barrel dump.  We would rather that water go into our gardens then overflow once the storm hits and just run into the vegetation around the rain barrels.  We did not have the foresight to put the rain barrel stations directly INTO the garden areas mostly because we had no idea where the gardens would be.  That would have made the most sense and we may have to consider changing things up if the summer droughts become standard procedure and I have a horrible feeling that they will.

Anyhow, the forecast is calling for rain and so today was a rain barrel dump day - We have watered and watered to empty out all 11 barrels into our veggie gardens.  Our thinking is that by watering just before the storm there is more chance of the ground being moist and allowing for greater penetration of the rain - these violent, quick storms drop a lot of rain but little seems to be absorbed, instead running off the gardens and taking soil with them. While there is a bit of a risk that we will not have water for days ahead if the rain does not materialize, the "extra" water on the garden is not a bad thing at this point and we can say they have all had a good watering and we may actually have a break from watering if the rain arrives. 

                                             The good news is the clouds are rolling in...