Hi lily,

How big is the garden and how many gallons of water does the pond hold? How deep is the pond? Is there no electricity near the garden or fishpond? How many feet are these two features from the house? How close are your neighbors? How far is the fish pond from the garden? Is the garden higher or lower than the pond in elevation. What is your annual rainfall? Is your garden all daylilys? There are many things you can do depending on your budget. Aloha

Hi, I'm the president of the organic gardening club at our local community college and the garden I was talking about is the garden there. There is a large pond that is in the process of being built inside the garden which is about 60' long by 40' wide. The pond does not have any water in it yet but the hole we dug is 5' deep at the deepest point and the pond is about 26' X 24'. It is a vegetable garden with everything grown in raised beds filled with compost. right now our only water is a large barell 75 gal? maybe however that may go when we get the pond done.

Just wondering how we might water a large garden like that more easily as using a watering can goes very slowly.

Thanks

Harbor freight has a lot of gas engine water pumps.
I like the idea of pumping to a storage tank first.
We farmers have fuel transfer pumps (hand, 12 volt, 110 volt) that can pump water too.

Hi again Lily,

You have approximately 6,000 gal of water to use from the pond. If you have fish you only want to draw down about at most 1.5 ft. (25 x 23 x 1.5 x 7.481) equals 6,452 gal or you will be having fish for dinner. I believe you would utilize about 1,200 gal a week at full plant maturity. (58 x 38 x 0.5 gal/sf) which equal 1,100 gal/week. You have plenty of supply. The next issue is when the water pump would be run and who is going to run it. You would run it through a 1 " pvc mainline with filter to each person's plot with a gate or ball valve fitting at the end to be turned on manually at a certain time period each week or two times a week. People can automate from their own plot's manual valve fitting. You want to economize running the pump($$$) if everyone is paying for the pump and running it(this can be automated with a timer). The size of the pump would be based on the 600 gal every 2 or three day interval. If people need more have them fill a barrel at their plot and use additional water saved there. So if you need 600 gal and take 1 hour to irrigate, your flow rate would be 600 gal per hour or 10 gal per min. If you have to push the water uphill make sure your pump is rated for 120% of the vertical elevation in feet between pump and the highest bed. I don't believe this would be a very big and expensive electrical submersible pump. If electricity is not available a small generator can be use or the 12v battery system. More $$ or manpower and dedication. Hope my calcs are good. Someone double check me. thanks. Let us know how we did on the theory compared to what you actually did. JMHO GL Aloha.