Another Water Collection System

Glyn Williams shares some photos of his allotment’s water collection system and his anti-bug protection cages.

These photos were sent in by Glyn Williams following this post on Water Harvesting on Allotments:

He stated on the water harvesting post:

I took on an overgrown allotment Sep 2019. Boy am I pleased – what a life saver for me during the pandemic of 2020. However, I soon learnt that even though there is a tap on the allotment, one tap for 25 allotments is not enough. Secondly this tap is a spur of the main tap in the adjacent block of allotments resulting in no water whilst they are using water.

2020

So during the autumn/winter of 2020, I built my own shed and covered area to collect water into 4 blue barrels. Through a bit of watching YouTube videos, I worked out how to connect these barrels together without taking the tops off using 2 inch connectors available from amazon. In March 2021, I extended the covered area – its now about 8m long x 1.5m wide and collects into two banks of 4 blue barrels giving me a total of 2000 litres. I am planning to connect another 4 barrels when I can source them (These all come of farms in Wiltshire free, but I need to get them to Norfolk – the pandemic has stopped this.)

2021

In April 2021, after spending so much time watering onions due to the long dry period in 2020, I set up an automatic watering system which I will extend next year. This consisted of two hoses connected to each bank of barrels, fed to a Hozelock auto irrigation timer. From the timer two houses feed each end of a series of soaker hoses. The timer turned the water on at sun set and sun rise for a set period (10min) of time every 2 or days depending what I set it on. I had soaker hoses on my runner and French beans and simply turned on this hose when I was down the allotment for a period of time and ensured it was turned off before I went home.

As a result of all of this, I hardly had to water by hand this summer gone. The 8 barrels provided sufficient water for my allotment (35m x 8m). I would recommend that every one with an allotment should collect their own water.

Results

Since May 2020, I have bought no vegetables other than 2 x 1.5kg of potatoes (as my potatoes did not keep long enough), tomatoes, peppers, ginger (I have no greenhouse or polytunnel) and mushrooms.

If you are interested, I have photos of my water collection system and my soaker hose watering system and also some cages I built to prevent carrot fly, cabbage root fly and cabbage caterpillars from attacking my crops.

The photos – click for larger images.