In a message dated 6/22/2007 7:07:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time, billj AT harborside.com writes:I don't find that to have any meaning without some reference to the number of gallons required. My raised beds must be drenched each day in hot weather, to a much greater degree than if the plants were in the ground.
Maybe you'll think that gardening is still fun after you have to raise all the water for your garden 100' with a hand pump.
Correct, not 100 feet in my case, more like 25. I have an ancient pitcher pump in the center of the garden and it lifts the water 25 feet from a catch basin in a creek some 120 feet away.
If you calculate
the caloric expenditure involved with pumping that much water, it would add several hundred calories onto your day's total, after chopping wood and before all else.
Yes, if you raised water 100 feet by muscle power, it would take several hundred calories of food.
My brother in Arizona has 3 times the lift and at least 3 times the water need, should he ever find a need to cultivate his own food. So his need to expend calories arbitrarily jumps to 9 times mine, in 110 degree heat for half the year. At this point it becomes a question of whether there would even be enough hours in a day.We opt not to do that, for obvious reasons.
Sorry, you're dealing with a dull luddite here. It's not obvious at all to me.
>TheThe pumps cost $500 a pop. I honestly can't say whether we've run that much electricity through it yet, after 10 years. The reason they're ridiculous is that we have a 1000 watt pump to do a 10W job. Try to find something more appropriate to the job, and you'll pay much, much more, despite the much lower wattage. I've had it with this game.
reason why these systems are possibly more valuable to us than to you is that we're 3 days away from a dead garden once the power goes out, since the electric pump we're stuck with now allows for no other options.
I have no idea how long my gardens would last this summer without irrigation. We get a thunderstorm every ten days or so be we are more than 11 inches below he normal rainfall for the year so far. Some things would have died for sure, many more would never have germinated and transplanting would have been impossible.
I'm don't disparage the use of electicity especially for such applications as lifting water where you get a lot of return for the little expense that it costs.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.