South Church Organic Garden - "Plant a Row for the Hungry"
Since April 2009 - Hybrid System
The South Church in Mount Prospect has an unbelievable garden where they grow produce for the needy. We collaborated with the members on what kind of system they would like and we came up with some pretty creative irrigation solutions. Challenges:
- 19 - 60 foot rows of crops
- No rain water collection before Garden Green EcoSolutions, LLC got involved
- Manually watering and weeding became backbreaking work and too hard to maintain
The picture on the left is of the 3 - 330 gallon tanks at the South Church that provide the water they need for irrigating their crops. The tanks are connected at the bottom to act as one large 990 gallon tank. In the top of the photo on the left you can see the 3 solar panels that recharge the 3 Solar Rain Pump - Timers that irrigate from the tanks to the crops.
One of the more interesting aspects of the system is that the tanks are located in spot where the roof does not provide enough runoff to fill them. To solve this problem we installed a Solar Rain Pump - Hybrid to pump water from a suitable downspout to the tanks about 50 feet away. Water fills the container under the downspout and is automatically pumped from a Solar Rain Pump in the leftmost container. A 15-Watt solar panel keeps this system recharged.
Another interesting solution we came up with is the "above the crop" irrigation lines. In the previous season we found that when our irrigation lines were on the ground they were stepped on while weeding and sprayers had to be continually extended to keep up with plant growth. To solve this problem we suspended the irrigation lines 3-4 feet above the crops to drip in a complete line or when the plants are far enough apart a drip line extends to the base of the plants. Keeping the irrigation lines in line with the rows of crops places the water where it is needed which drastically reduces weed growth and uses the rain water with maximum efficiency.
A Solar Rain Pump - Hybrid unit pumps the rain water to the tanks for irrigation use. When the members of the South Church are ready to irrigate they use 3 Solar Rain Pump - Timer units to move the water from the tanks to the irrigation lines in the garden. Irrigating the garden used to be a manual process that not only took forever but it used municipal water. Now the entire garden can be watered with 3 Solar Rain Pumps in 20 minutes. It is truly a site to behold and especially at the end of the season when last year they donated a total of 1600 pounds of produce to the needy. Last year's rain water consumption was about 3200 gallons.