Sjoerd, the barrel and the cubes are stationary. They are on cement blocks to raise them enough to get a bucket under the spout. I'm fairly strong, but rolling around 250 gal. of water is a bit beyond my ability!
What MG posted was what I had in mind ! Those large cubes are plentiful here and the blue barrels are easy to find and reasonable ! Rather than the holes for overflow I would have two barrels side by side with a piece of PVC pipe between the two ! Overflow from one flows into the next one ! With the gravity flow system it would go a long way for your early spring planting ! Just ask any plumber how to rig a gravity flow system that you can just attach a water hose to ! How large is your entire community garden plot ? As for your tool shed,, if there is any residential building in your area,, check with the contractors for scrap lumber ! Many times 2X4`s and 2X6`s are not reused from the foundation forms ! They may let you have them to haul off or burn them which is what they do here ! Otherwise they have to pay for removal ! A simple A frame and some tin roofing would do what you need !
MG, I chuckled picturing you pushing around 250 gal of water!! Your system looks great! We had a drought here this summer....if it continues, it would be good to invest in a similar system at the house. Mart, your idea sounds great and would work wonderfully at the house too! Alas, at the Community Garden we have no roofs to serve as a run off area. I have tried leaving contractor buskers open to the elements but we only collect a little bit of rain. We would need a roof or a complicated tarping system to funnel water into a cistern type thing. But keep the water ideas coming! I'm responsible for researching a better system. We are thinking of a solar operated pump to bring the water up from our spring to the top of the garden, then using gravity to get it to our plots. (We have no electricity at the Garden). SJ the land our Garden is on is owned by the town Conservation Commission. They do not charge us anything for it's use. They also don't provide any services such as water or electricity or excess mulch or fencing, etc. ..... I know of some towns where some of these services are provided. Usually water. If I sound jealous, it is because I am! But then again, some of those towns restrict the gardeners from planting perennial stuff like blueberries, etc. and have other rules. We can pretty much do whatever we want & we make up our own rules. Mart, I'll pass on your idea about the wood for a shed to the Boy Scout we hope to engage to build it as an Eagle Scout project. Thanks for that! We are picturing something 5'X5'. We are a very small Community Garden...maybe 25 plots?
Mart, connecting two barrels is a great idea, and some folks have done that. We don't because we have sufficient rainwater storage with our set-up. Instead of using PVC pipes others have used the "accordion" flexible pipes used for washing machine discharge. They are easier to connect and if a barrel shifts, they move with it. Cayuga, you really don't need a shed. Some ranchers around here just put up four posts to support a tin roof, with runoff going into a cattle trough. It would be easy enough to put up, and instead of watering livestock, you'd have water for your gardens. It could be an open trough, or if you install guttering and a downspout, a barrel or cube elevated so a bucket could be filled from a spigot (barrels don't come with spigots, but the cubes do.)
Sjoerd... I am interested in how you do your lotties too. keep the questions and answers or just plain information flowing right here if you dont mind. we just started a community garden this past Summer and I really know nothing about the administration or actual workings or how tos of individual issues that arise. BUT I volunteered to be a mentor and ended up volunteering involuntarily as a committee member.
Good for you Carolyn! As though you needed something else to do, huh? I hope it is interesting for you. Although I occasionally get frustrated with some of our gardeners, by and large folks who garden are a great group of people. Right? Idiosyncracies aside of course. And thanks so much for bearing up with this community garden thread. If you want templates of our paperwork for the garden, let me know. I could email them to you. Marlingardener, I'll think on your suggestion. I wonder how big the roof would have to be to accomodate 22 plots, each being 400 square feet. If my math is right, I think that is a fifth of an acre. Maybe there is some formula on the web for roof size needed per acre. Any one have any ideas here? Your two barrels provide enough water for your gardens, right? How big are they, roughly?
Cayuga, we have two large flower beds in the front, and by large I mean I don't know their size. We also have six raised vegetable beds, 8'x6', and two flower beds in the back yard, again I have no idea of the square footage. We have open bed in back of the barn for potatoes, beans, squash, etc. and the bed size depends on how much we want to plant. I don't think there is a formula for roof size/acre because that would depend on soil type and amount of rainfall and the water requirements of the crops planted. Our big gardens in front of the barn were on blackland prairie, and drained much more slowly than the sandy soil in back of the barn. We now water more frequently with the sandy soil drainage. We have three 250 gal. cubes and two 55 gal. barrels. We water five fruit trees, the raised beds, flower beds, the open bed, and the hens (and they are drinkers!). I don't think you will be able to water 22 plots with one roof water collector. But, any rainwater collected would ease the distance some gardeners would have to carry water, and it would lower any water costs you might have. I'm sorry I cannot be of more exact help and I certainly admire your efforts, and wish you and all the community gardeners the very best!
There are many ways you can accomplish your goals for water ! If you had the collection barrels up now for fall/spring rains they might be overflowing by planting time ! Even if you ran some ordinary guttering along the fence line it might catch enough ! You need to plan ahead sometimes ! You might consider a group effort in buying a gas powered water pump that would allow water to be pumped into each collection barrel from the main source ! I assume it is spring fed ?
Come on now Jane—just eat a can of spinach, push that thing around and say, “I yam who I yam”! Chuckle. You go girl. You can do it, you can do it. Cayu— you have a good set up there it sounds like. You guys will have the definate advantage of making your own rules. Whatever rules you have agreed upon ... do you write these down, or is everything very informal and not really necessry? I am interested to hear what kinds of plans your group are considering for the coming year. Carolyn, somehow I had not recalled that you were helping set up a municipal garden. I am so delighted to hear that. Of course I would he happy to answer questions on how we do things. There are enough aspects to consider Guys, I have to go to bed now. It is 01:30 here now. I will join in again tomorrow.
Thank you Cayuga... I am on a committee that there are 8? of us. a couple have participated in community gardens before so that is helpful. I really don't have to do a lot... just come up with the best priced materials usually. I think it needs fenced in but that will have to wait a bit. I would prefer a couple strands of electric to just get something temporary up but since it is in a park... and people seem to play the "stupid" my baby, my baby got shocked we need to protect them more.... ... game. well it will teach em fast to not mess with it. it isn't out to maim but to deter. I have no patience for that stuff. anyway... thats my biggest issue with damage in the garden. its a lot of work if the deer come through night after night and graze it off. S, I may not have mentioned it. I was outside all day every day for the whole season, but I was sick from Dec to May and really running on fumes so to speak. I didn't have a lot of energy for anything extra. not even a keyboard.
Oh I see. Now I don’t feel so bad. You have to be the busiest person I know. I hope your muni garden really gets going, it sounds like it is in a bit of a precarious place though. I hope that you can keep the deer out. You have some good ideas, Mart. Gosh Jane, I had no idea that your set up was arranged how it is. It is so thoughtful. I think that the shortcomings of an internet platform is that one can never get a realistic overview of the members’ layout. This is why I so enjoy seeing pics of everyone’s hortcultural efforts.
I checked out a community garden in the next town over. Their Garden is about 3-4 times the size of ours. They have three different watering systems:. A box well, a point well, and a retension pond. And they use several different pumps. The first is a solar powered pump It takes the water from the box well and sends it to two connected containers: These are the large plastic containers Mart was talking about. They used to hold "liquids" like shampoo or ketchup or cooking oil, for shipping. They are wrapped in black cloth to reduce algae growth. From here, the solar powered pump sends it to spigots in the garden. Unfortunately, the photos of the gas powered pump didn't seem to land on my phone... Must be somewhere up in the ether! The man I spoke to recommended the gas powered pump over the solar one, hands down. More reliable, much less maintenance, great output. Sorry I don't have a pic of it. Here's a pic of the retension pond: And here's a pic of the house that protects one of their gas pumps: As you can see, the pump has been stored for the winter I don't have a photo of either the box well or the pencil well, both being underground, obviously. The box well is just that: a huge box 4x4x4 feet with holes in it buried in the ground 12 feet down. The pencil well is a wide pipe driven into the ground by some hefty guys pulling on a rope that has a heavy weight attached. The rope is threaded over a tripod and they let the weight come crashing down on the pipe, driving it into the ground. Get it? They drive it down to the sandy area below the level of the water. I'm told you first have to get a backhoe in to dig a hole to find out how far down the surface water is. Here's a photo of some more of their water tanks: And here's a photo of their valve system to distribute the water Opening and closing those valves distributes the water to the multiple holding tanks they have. This is a large community garden, much larger than ours. But i got some great ideas. The rest of these pics are of some of their outbuildings, all built at one time or another but groups of Eagle Scouts earning their final badges. This is one of two tools sheds. The masked man is the guy I spoke to. He gets donated tools from townspeople when they move away or downsize.
Part 2: They also have a shed for the storage of donated wood, for future projects: And a shed of donated lawnmowers and tractors: They also have a shed of old geezers who repair the lawnmowers, tractors, water pumps, tools, etc etc. I wish I had one of them. And lastly, looky what they have here!!! Quite a class A operation, don't you think?
