Permies Poll: Where do you source water for your garden?

I am fortunate that for a lot of the growing season, I have a respectable amount of rain. I however supplement the dry times with water straight from my house.

This year I am inspired by Wheaton Labs. I have noticed how they utilize a bucket/ladle system to water plants and I have obtained something similar. I have repurposed a thrown out 'kiddie pool' to capture rainwater. I will scoop up some water from it into a bucket and then walk around with the filled bucket and ladle to disperse some water! I'm going to even get fancy with it and start growing duckweed for some added fertilizing benefits.

We obtain our water from an artesian spring located 2,200 feet away and 300 feet up the mountain.
125 psi at the house, icy cold, pure glacier melt water. (Montana is Awesome!)
High mineral content, we, the garden, and the piggies, love it!

We have a water mine, which is a horizontal tunnel dug around 30 metres  into the side of the mountain that fills up with water. The end has a retaining wall and water feeds down to the house and garden via pipes.

No idea how that fits into the survey. And I can't find a good online source to describe it. I should take more photos...

You win Burra.

I don't know what you win, but you win!

I never heard of a water mine. That is awesome. Is it an intentional tunnel for water or a tunnel that was made that just so happens to fill with water?

I've added an 'Other' option in honor of who knows what else might come up!

Timothy Norton wrote:I never heard of a water mine. That is awesome. Is it an intentional tunnel for water or a tunnel that was made that just so happens to fill with water?

I'm pretty sure there was a natural spring there all along, judging by the lay of the land and the way a stream miraculously appears just below it, apparently from nowhere, complete with its own little gulley that has obviously been there an awfully long time. The rock here is very soft and porous. Not sure what the official name is (tuff, maybe?)  but it's basically ash and bits of all sorts of stuff that once erupted from a volcano and has gradually turned to rock. There are loads of water mines around the place - we have three on our couple of acres. It seems to me that someone just realised this place was a water source and they'd get a more reliable supply if they dug a man-sized tunnel into the rock and put a retaining wall to hold it in. There's an overflow which we've diverted via a pipe to feed the start of the stream directly rather than having a wet bit on the narrowest bit of the path up the mountain.

The pipe that supplies the house and garden extends around 8 metres into the tunnel so it's picking up water from where there is no light. The water at the front of the mine is kinda green and scungey  for the first 3 metres. And the frogs love it. And I love frogs so we've been dragging our feet about screening the light off. So we thought a long pipe into the dark bit of the tunnel was the best short-term solution. Also the outlet pipe is supported around a foot off the ground surface, so if there is any gunk it's likely to sink below the pipe that collects our drinking water.

From my sink.  I know that's not very exciting, but we rent, so we're limited on coming up with rain collection.  Tim's idea of the children's pool could be a place to start, but again we have to be mindful, so for now we're sticking with the sink.  Perhaps at some point I could start putting something out when its raining, like some 5 gal. buckets, easy to bring in and take out, anything semi-perminent seems like a big ask, as we just moved here.

I have two land areas that I grow on.  

The first is my home farm. The majority of the water is rain which is conserved via mulch. But I also catch  rainwater which gets stored in a large catchment tank until needed. The gardens around the house are supplemented with grey water.  During  times of drought I may occasionally need to truck in water, which comes from the county water system—which originally was sourced as surface ground water from a swampy are up the mountain.

The second area is a farm down in town. All the water there comes from a tunnel, much like what Burra uses. I do not know how far back the tunnel goes into the mountain, but I think someone said it was well over 100 feet. Water flows from it and is directed into  pipes, taking the water to a large reservoir for storage. These water tunnels are fairly common here. They were made to supply water to the sugar plantations. Since it was Chinese workers who created them, they are simply referred to as the Chinese tunnels. Many of the Chinese tunnels are still functioning, though a number have silted in over time.

In the UK, mostly municipal water, we have a small rainwater butt which doesn't hold enough to last past spring.

In Bulgaria, where we get severe summer droughts, so far it's mostly grey water, supplemented with municipal water. As I'm only there for a week per month, I'm not trying to grow a real garden yet, but do want to keep some tree seedlings I planted alive. Long term goal is to put in as much rainwater collection as the roofs and the rainfall will allow, and digging rain basins to hold the water from the downpipes where water tanks couldn't be situated. Unfortunately it's quite challenging because the land slopes and because of where the roofers placed the downpipes.

I found our spigget, so I have a hose on order which should arrive in a few days, so yeah, soon it will come from the side of my house instead of the sink, as though that is any different.  It will be more convenient  though than running back and forth haha.  I still want to find a way to collect some rainwater on the downlow around the corner,