Dry Spring

The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Dry Spring

We started up our creek irrigation system today to give our Spring garden a boost.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.

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Irrigation

I'm about to fix my irrigation system as well. I have a creek running about 3 feet from the garden but it's also about 3 feet down as well. I tried using a ram pump but discovered that if you don't have a minimum of 3 feet head, it doesn't work. I finally had a conversation with a water pump supply engineer who suggested using a bilge pump hooked up to a solar panel to move the water about 9 feet up and then over to the garden where I have PVC pipes across the beds that then gravity feed the water from the creek into the beds. I've been doing this for about 12 years now and it works like a charm. Every few years, however, because there is so much sediment in the creek, the pump croaks and I have to replace it. The pump, however, only costs about $25. The 30 watt solar panel I bought in 2002 (? or thereabouts) for $130 and hasn't given up yet! In this case, Kudos for technology!