Above: When a community garden to help people in need hit its own hard times, organizers found an ecological solution for supporting bountiful harvests. (images cropped from past Facebook pics and contributed photo)
Over the past few years, residents from a Southborough neighborhood shared news about a Victory Garden they created to help support area food pantries.
Today, they asked me to share an update on how they made the garden even greener, by adding solar powered irrigation.
Here is their news:
It may sound like an odd thing for a garden to go solar. Isn’t a garden, by definition, solar? It is, but watering the garden requires energy. In its 4th year of operation, the garden is a community endeavor that provides fresh produce to local food pantries including the Southborough Food Pantry. Last year the garden provided over 3000 lbs. of fresh produce with a retail value of about $10,500. That was the good news; but it could have been significantly more. Last year’s drought significantly reduced yields. “We estimate that we lost about 30% of our crops.” said Diana Wainrib, manager of the garden. “We had to fill garbage cans with water, haul them to the garden in a trailer and then pump the water on to the field using pumps powered by a generator. This was cumbersome, labor intensive and nowhere near enough.”
The solution was to drill a well to provide sufficient irrigation water. Over the winter the garden team raised sufficient funds to drill a well, but the question remained how to power it? Bringing power in from the street would be very expensive and would require 1 or 2 poles. A portable generator could be used but that would be noisy and would generate green house gasses.
The solution that was settled on was to set up a simple solar system that would directly power the well pump. After some research, a turn key system from Rural Power Systems was chosen. This past Spring, a 300 ft well was drilled and then the solar system was installed.
The results exceeded expectations. The system can water about 750 feet of drip line or 2 sprinklers. “We could not be happier. Our water problems have been solved with a simple quiet system. Now all we have to worry about are frosts, insects and, ironically, too much rain.”
If you would like to find out more about the well project or to help out in the garden, please contact us at dwainrib@gmail.com
