I think you'd have to water 48/14 with a sprayer. I'd just carry it in buckets if my situation was what you describe.
But how about a hand or pedal powered pump?

 

My friend who lives on 80 acres in the summer fills buckets with hand pump well, and drives them in ATV to her garden. 5 gall at a time is not enough, and last year her garden died.

What I would do:
A food grade 55 gallon barrel, laid on it's side and permanently attatched to a wagon-like thing. Make a filler thingy on top, and have a spigot with fixture for hose on one end near the bottom. Fill it, drag it, and turn it on. Gravity will do the dispensing.

Probably find some sort of hand pump [or battery operated] like for emptying/cleaning large fish tanks to fill it.

 

shadowrider said

I think you'd have to water 48/14 with a sprayer

I don't understand what you mean by 48/14. Please explain. Thanks.

 

48 hours a day 14 days a week... :thumb:

 

We had no water at our last farm, I hauled it all to the farm in a 350 gallon tank in the back of my truck.

I generally started my garden very early each year to get as much spring rain as possible with plants already rooted well and growing. I would haul 5 gallon buckets of water to some of the plants from a surface well that I had dug. I would generally just water the tomatoes with about 20 to 25 gallons a day.

The peas, corn, radishes, beans, potatoes and garlic generally went without any water unless they started to look a bit wilted. Every year I managed to get great crops of peas, radishes, garlic and quite often potatoes. I managed to get corn one time in 8 years and it was only a few under developed heads.

One dry year I decided to try and water the garden with water from the 350 gallon tank, after doing that for about a week, I realized that I would need around 350 gallons a day minimum to make much of a difference.

My gardens are generally quite large, I would work up 2,000+ square feet of garden each year and practice trying to get vegetable to grow without anything but the natural rainfall. I wasted a lot of time, but I also learned a lot.

If you keep the surface of the soil covered with old hay it will help the soil retain moisture much better.

I also found that if I covered mounds of old hay that set out all winter with about a foot of good soil, the subsurface hay would hold a great amount of water from the winter well into the summer.

I also found you preferably want to water at night rather than during the day.

Having plants closer together and grown in thick like you see in nature seems to help the plants to lose moisture less quickly, but also tends to make them fruit and go to seed sooner, bearing smaller than normal fruit.

Keeping the plants somewhat shaded from direct hot sun in the mid day seems to help with water as well.

I also found that if I used a post hole digger I could dig down about three feet to the water table in spring and put good soft soil in all the way to the spring water table that seemed to help a bit with water.

As for your idea of using a backpack sprayer to water, all of my sprayers hold about 2 gallons of water or so, you will be refilling water a LOT even on a reasonably small garden. If I have to water anything by hand it is with five gallons buckets, I always use two buckets that way I can keep the weight on either side of me equal and tape garden hose over the handles so that it is easier on the hands.

If you were going to use some kind of a pump, I would advise an RV water pump,12volt and the ones I used to feed our house at the last place were rated at about 3.5 gallons a minute. I just ran our water from the cistern into the house with RV pump run off of a 12 volt battery that was always hooked to a charger. This was our household water supply for nearly ten years. The nice thing was, that when the electric went out we still had water pressure from the cistern to the house for up to three days running off the battery.

I have four large ponds here on this farm and a good well, so water is no longer an issue for us now. I have a pond that is about 30 feet higher than everything around the house and one of the former owners of this place used to gravity irrigate the young trees in the orchard and his garden from that pond. He warned not to forget about turning it off, he forgot and let it run for several days a few times and nearly ran the pond dry a couple times. This pond is triangular shaped and around 65 feet on each side with a depth of about 14 feet at the center.

What are the dimensions and depth of your pond that you are watering out of approximately? I can calculate how many gallons of water it is holding for you, handy to know if you ever had to rely on it for water.

 

ATST said

My friend who lives on 80 acres in the summer fills buckets with hand pump well, and drives them in ATV to her garden. 5 gall at a time is not enough, and last year her garden died.

I've ruled out the notion of hauling water in buckets because I know I couldn't handle it well and my garden would die too.

Thanks for the idea about the 55-gallon drum, but I'd need some kind of vehicle to tow it, and I want to stay away from solutions that rely on petroleum-based products because I'm thinking sustainability.

Somebody else mentioned a hand pump or foot pump. I've looked for both but haven't found anything that would work for my situation. I considered a pitcher pump briefly, but that wouldn't be a satisfactory solution because it wouldn't get the water to the garden itself. What I mean is that I'd have to use the pitcher pump to fill a container with water and then carry the container to the garden. That would be too much work even if I installed the pitcher pump in a location really close to the garden. I don't think you can attach a hose to the output end of a pitcher pump, either - and even if you could do that, you'd need two people to accomplish the garden irrigation: one person to man the pump and the other person to walk around the garden with the hose.

 

Thanks for the idea about the 55-gallon drum, but I'd need some kind of vehicle to tow it, and I want to stay away from solutions that rely on petroleum-based products because I'm thinking sustainability.

They make garden carts like giant wagons with big wheels, that Im guessin you could pull yourself. Some breeds of dog will also pull it.

 

Do you have any wind ?
There are a number of mills that can be employed to move water directly or indirectly .
Even a cheap garden mole mill can be modified to move water simply .
Do some research in to all the ways water has been moved through the centuries. It's worth while.
Personally I am setting up a green house with raised beds (Aquaponics) and recycling the water from the fish pond ajacent to the garden and back to the fish and chickens as well.
Just a thought.
Less water is lost through evaporation and lost in the deep soil.

 

Build a platform 5 or 6 feet high and big enough to hold 1 or 2 55 gal. drums. You can get a small pump, battery and small PV panel that should be plenty to fill the drums. The PV panel charges the battery. The battery powers the pump. Figure out out how long it takes to fill the drums and put a timer on the pump.
Then use gravity to get the water out of the drums and into your garden. Simple. Inexpensive and sustainable.

 

A lot of good ideas have been offered by Mountain. Thank you. I might pursue some of the ideas you mentioned.

Let me explain a few things I probably should have said in the beginning.

- I'm 62, single, and female.

- I'm in pretty good health, but I'm not very strong in terms of muscle.

- I'm not particularly good with tools and machinery. I'm starting to develop skills in those areas, but I will probably never become highly skilled.

- I'm planning for long-term sustainability and survivalism.

For these reasons, I'm biased toward simple solutions that can be installed/built and managed by one person, don't have a lot of moving parts, don't rely heavily on electricity or petroleum-based fuel sources.

Someone else mentioned wind power. Thanks, but I've ruled out wind-powered solutions because, being gadget-challenged, I want to stay away from things with a lot of moving parts. Also, I'm sure I couldn't install something like that by myself. (Like many preppers, I like to keep my prepping activities close to the vest.)

I've seen several backpack sprayers on line that have 4-gallon tanks - this one, for example. This particular one weighs about 10 pounds. I think I could carry the 10 pounds plus the weight of the 4 gallons of water on my back. For me, I'm pretty sure this would be a lot easier than carrying a 5-gallon bucket of water.

 

Thanks to JDBushcraft for the idea about the platform, 55-gallon drums, PV system, etc. I could probably handle this project, but I was hoping for a simpler solution.

FYI, the survival cabin I'm going to build will be powered by a PV system.

 

The setup for something like this really is easy, especially if you understand the PV system. This just needs a small PV panel to trickle charge a battery.
You can use a regular hose, soaker hose or set up a drip irrigation system from the drums.

 

What about an RV 12 volt water pump hooked to a 12 volt car battery with a solar panel for recharging the battery? I saw that you mentioned the topography doesn't lend itself to a solar powered pump, but would it work long enough to recharge a battery? I used to use one of these pumps for priming a mobile pressure washer and they work great.

 

A 200 square foot garden will need about 124 gallons of water per week. I don't know the size of your garden but a week without rain would mean 31 backpack sprayer trips for that size garden. If it takes 5 minutes to get the water and empty the sprayer you are going to spend 3 hours just watering.

 

A 200 square foot garden will need about 124 gallons of water per week. I don't know the size of your garden but a week without rain would mean 31 backpack sprayer trips for that size garden. If it takes 5 minutes to get the water and empty the sprayer you are going to spend 3 hours just watering.

Even this amount of 124 gallons a week is only.6 gallons per square foot a week, I water way more than that to the house plants in our house.

 

Dire warning

Don't EVER use a plastic sprayer that's been used for weedkiller, to spray
water, fertilizer, etc. - In fact, I'm even dubious about using metal sprayers, but
it is possible (barely) to get them cleaned out well enough (and even then I'm
not sure about the hose) .

If you get a backpack sprayer like that I'd get an indelible marker and mark
it WATER ONLY NO CHEMICALS or something... And don't lend it to Cousin
Pete.

 

You don't want to mist the plants, you want to deeply water the roots.

When full of water, that sprayer is going to weigh around 40 pounds. I think I'd rather carry two buckets.

If you're going to be hauling/pumping the water from your pond to your garden, why not set up a reservoir system (in the form of 250/300 gal totes or 55 gal drums), which could be set up to feed drip hoses?

edit - I see JDBushcraft has already mentioned drums and drip hoses. I read and type too slowly!

 

I have some of these and they use 2 liter bottles to slow and deep water your plants. Of course not very practical with row crops.

 

Where could i get something like this. Do you have a link?

 

Wow - when I kicked off this thread I had no idea it would generate so much interest and discussion!

Some folks have offered some excellent ideas and caveats. At the moment, the most promising idea seems to be the PV system suggested by JDBushcraft. That project is definitely outside my comfort zone; however, if I did manage to get something like that up and running, not only would it irrigate my garden, it would also enable me to get my feet wet (pardon the pun) with PV technology - so the idea is indeed appealing.

Note to Savinkov: If I were to use a backpack sprayer to water my garden, it would be a brand-new one - not one that's been used to spray chemicals.

Thanks so much to everyone here. I want to continue this discussion - hopefully tomorrow - but I have to give it up for this evening because duty calls.

 

This looks easy and interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j2PNiVwNJE

 

After reading all the post, what is the lay of the land. Will the garden be uphill/downhill or level with the level of the pond. Is it a natural pond or man made? How far is garden from pond?

can you move garden closer to pond? although probably not ideal, its better to fish where the fish are, know what i mean?

best case scenario:

pond is above garden
get lots of hose let gravity do the work! Reading your post you seem to be smarter than the average bear so I am assuming (and you know what that means) that this is not the case.

pond is level with garden
would the possibility of putting in a near garden cistern be feasable? level pumping of water is fairly easy. you could build/buy 1000 gal cistern and only have to fill it every couple weeks. water garden from cistern.

pond is below garden
see all of the above replies.

if pond is man made, do you have access to dam? plant your garden below the dam. watering under the dam should be straight forward gravity issue.

as mentioned before, drip systems are much more efficient but if done correctly may be expensive (http://www.dripworks.com/product/KGB1) but the money you spend will be directly deductible from your back surgery:

I realize your age and gender, but dont forget about Dorothoy! http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/ainsworth27.html
believe in yourself, dont be scared to ask for help and you can do anything you can dream! just be sure to be well insured

GTI

 

What about a solar pump meant for fountains that you can pump water from the pond? I've seen them in a variety of price ranges, lift height and flow rates starting at about $50 up to several hundred and more. The only question is how much pressure you need to deal with drip systems or weeping hose or whatever you choose. A basic pump with a 1.5 meter lift is about $50 for 40g/h - http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/1.3-watt-Solar-Fountain-Pond-Water-Pump/4318043/product.html

We bought an off-grid cabin last year and am meeting with the drilling company for an estimate tomorrow. I currently have a 400 gallon cistern as well as a 200 gallon water tote. Once the well is dug I'll repurpose the cistern for rain-water collection for garden use. The designated garden/orchard area rangs from 15-20' lower than the cabin and I plan on letting gravity do the bulk of the work for me.

 

I used to spray round up with the backpack sprayer (used to, people. Don't get all cranky). After 2 rounds of spraying (2 tanks full), my back was aching. Like, take Advil and get an ice pack on it.

The sprayer doesn't have the capacity to fill and just water once a day. And if you were to get hurt at some time, your garden would die because you had no way to water it; not only is that sad to have happen, but expensive. Look into something more permanent. Drip systems are very easy, you experiment with it. The good thing about drip is that the water gets to the roots and not just the top soil. Mulch, mulch, mulch.

 

those things are 15 litres, that's three plants. Maybe. A bucket is about 9 litres. 2 buckets is more than 1 backpack.

Get a 40 gallon drum, hoist it up on a frame beside the pond, put a bung in the bottom and attach said bung it to a hose.

Attach a spigot or trigger to the holding end of the hose.

fill the 40 gallon drum. Go over to the garden, turn on the hose.

 

How about a hand pump like this:
https://www.lehmans.com/p-4503-hand-powered-water-pump.aspx

Feeding a 35 gallon tank like this:
http://www.tractorsupply.com//ProductDisplay?urlRequestType=Base&catalogId=10051&categoryId=&productId=7168&errorViewName=ProductDisplayErrorView&urlLangId=&langId=-1&top_category=&parent_category_rn=&storeId=10151

On a wagon like this:
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200311443_200311443

A 35 gallon tank like this will weigh a bit over 200lbs when full. That won't be too hard to pull on a big wagon. Four trips a week will give you 140 gallons, a little more than the calculated minimum water coverage. That should be doable.

I think that would be a lot better than 10 trips a day every day wearing a two gallon backpack sprayer.