Chinese Watering Can
 

I've been using 2x 2 gallon watering cans to water a test patch of corn consisting of 300 plants because I planted in the dry season and don't have a good irrigation system in place yet.

While I was researching the subject of lowtech irrigation I came upon references to the Chinese watering can and it seemed like an elegant solution for farmers on just a few acres like myself. The system consists of two very large watering cans with long spouts suspended from a shoulder yoke. The waterer walks down the rows, tipping the cans forward to throw water, refilling in whatever manner is expedient.

I estimate I am using on average about 20 gallons of water every other day on my corn. It takes me around half an hour to fill my two cans down by my pond and water the rows. I could carry two five galllon cans on such a rig and cut my watering time down to ten minutes. That would work out to just over half an hour every other day to water enough for my goal of 2,000 ears of corn per crop. I will have a crop of sunflowers of equal size and everything else will ammount to just a little less than the corn planting so that would work out to under 2 hours every other day to water everything assuming it doesn't rain.

I am using cut grass to pack in around my plants to hold in moisture, it works quite well. After a water the ground under the cut grass is still moist to the touch several days later even though the corn is obviously planted in full sun.

I have been considering a watering cart up to this point and it's always good to have redundancy but the Chinese watering can concept is simple and effective I believe this might be my main system of irrigation. The trouble is finding suitable 4 or 5 gallon watering cans. I've found nothing bigger than 2 gallons locally so I either need to turn up something on the net or else make the cans myself.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

What about ordinary five gallon buckets? They already have built-in handles. However, no spout, although maybe a hole drilled in them with a plug, or even some sort of valve would suffice. Or, you could rig up a spout on them of some sort.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

How many ears of corn per hour does this work out to?

How many calories in an ear of corn? Maybe 80 or 90?

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

I'm definitely hankering for an ear of corn now, thanks to this thread. :D

We don't have the means for growing our own corn now, but there are several local farms that grow and sell it good and fresh. It's just about the sweetest thing. I can't really bring myself to eat grocery store corn on the cob anymore... even with butter/salt/pepper. :thumbs do It tastes old and rotten.

The corn here is crisp, sweet, and just delicious. I don't even put anything on it... just eat it plain. :smile: Favorite way is to soak it, still in the husk, in water for 5-10 mins, and then pick it up by the end to let the excess water drain out, and set it on the charcoal bbq. Cook it for 10-15 mins turning it a couple times, and enjoy. :cool2:

I also recently learned (as in the past year) that when cooking corn as most folks do (husk it and then boil in a pot of water), it actually only needs to be cooked for maybe five minutes. I've always grown up with folks cooking it for 20+ minutes, and while it still tasted fine (at least when I still could tolerate the old grocery store corn), it was soft and chewy. Three-five minutes in boiling water is plenty to cook it, and it maintains that crisp crunch when you bite into it.

Sorry for the hijack, Rev... your corn-growing got my stomach-brain going, and I do love to think about food (but love to eat even more :wink:).



Back to the topic, I was thinking more on the five gallon plastic (not sure the exact makeup, but it's some form of plastic) bucket. What if you cut a hole near the bottom of the bucket, and attached a small piece of plastic pipe (like plumbing pipe, or something similar) that was narrow in diameter and whatever length you wanted (obviously longer you'd end up closer to the base of the plants, and narrower would cause the water to shoot farther from the buckets, do to the increased pressure... so you could experiment to see what sizing worked out best for the trajectory you're looking for). I was thinking you could attach it perhaps by melting the plastic together, sort of welding it in place, like the spout on a teapot or regular watering bucket... although the spout would be on the bottom, pointing downward. A plug or stop of some sort in the end of the spout would be needed, though.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

That would be interesting to calculate. It would be difficult to know exactly how many calories I would be burning filling the watering cans at the pond and walking aproximate 120 yards to perform the full chore but based on what an exercise bike at the gym at a luxory aparment I lived in immediately before moving here said for half an hour of what I considered to be more strenuous work than watering, it would be less than 2 ears of corn. There's 120 days till the corn is ready, so that's 60 days of watering assuming no rain at the cost of 120 ears of corn max.

Around June or July it will rain enough that I won't have to water at all till the end of November. My experimental planting proved the futility of planting corn before April, the test crop only grew to three feet tall or less. It will be interesting to see if the ears are similarly stunted or if they come out full sized.

Anyway, that means I'd use up 10% of the energy of the first crop planted in April and an insignificant portion of the second crop.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

Yup, it is indeed a tasty treat. Most commercial corn these days is GMO so buyer beware. If you like sweet corn and ever want to grow your own they say Country Gentleman is a good heirloom variety. I grow Hickory King and most of it will become bird food, I will keep a few young ears for roasting though.


I've been considering the 5 gallon bucket myself. From the reports I read the best of the Chinese watering cans were square or rectangular in section and the spout was attached at the corner, I guess the angle of the corner acted as a sort of funnel allowing for easier flow than if the spout were attached to the flat side. My idea was to heat the bottom of the bucket enough to make it pliable and form it into a shallow cone to attach the spout to, achieving the same effect.

Not sure I'lll go with the 5 gallon bucket though. I might get some sheet metal and bump out a purpose built watering can. Longterm I'd love to have some copper or stainless watering cans.

I don't really believe in thread hijacks unless somebody is deliberately trying to be a jerk about it. Meandering around the general subject, brainstorming, prompting comments and generating ideas is why I post in the first place. If I didn't want that I'd keep everything between myself and reference works, so no worries there.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

Isn't that SEVENTY POUNDS of water?

:stickyman carry that long and a chiropractor will be a major expense

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

Rev, do you normally use water from your pond to water your crops (at least the ones you don't have an irrigation system rigged for)? Do you just dip the buckets in a pull them out? How is the pond replenished... through rain alone?

PS - you stay up as late as I do, don't ya? (2-3am, even :Zzzz: ) :bear_happy:



Nah, seventy pounds isn't bad. Think of it like a very light squat, that you carry around for a while. Probably would be able to find a more ergonomical setup than a straight squat bar, too. :wink:

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

Yup, I've always been a night owl. Lately I've been going to bed around 5 or 6.

I water from my pond exclusively. I've done a few tests that have shown the pond water to promote more rapid and vibrant growth than my well or even rain water. I attribute it to the pond's ecosystem adding nutrients to the water but I haven't had a sample analyzed for actual content yet.

My pond is mostly replenished by rain but deep enough that the very bottom sits below the water table. It does get pretty shallow around this time of year waiting for the Summer rains. We never got any tropical storms last year so the pond did get fully topped off, by my best estimates it's about 15 feet deep at full capacity and about a half acre square.

Right now I just wade into the pond to fill. I had some stepping stones but the water has receded too much for them to be any use right now and it's all soft silt. I have thought of building a little dock or pier at some point, as well as setting up a manual pump or a dipper.

Actually "a pint's a pound the world around" so it's closer to 80lbs of water. Factor in the shoulder yoke and the buckets and you can approach 95-100lbs. Not a big deal, especially if you consider that the load gets lighter really quick. I can carry a 50lbs sack of feed on each shoulder no problem and that isn't as well balanced. Maybe somebody needs to work out more? :wink:

You do seriously need to be careful lifting, though. While a squat with a shoulder yoke is fairly safe I did manage to hurt myself last year. I was doing an overhead press with 175lbs, the heaviest I've done, and I arched my back as I pushed it up, I was a bit uncomfortable for a couple months after that. I've also pulled a muscle pulling on something very heavy from a bad angle but that kind of thing tends to go away pretty quick. If you use good form and listen to your body you can avoid most accidents.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

:getdown: you are in better shape then me.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

175 overhead, that's impressive! I've been off for a couple months now due to laziness, mainly, but I had been working out a couple nights a week sticking to compound exercises to build up some strength/mass (squats, deadlifts, overhead press, rows, etc). On the overheads I was doing 95x8 or so was the most, never tried for any max lifts or anything. I'd love to be able to overhead press 200 pounds someday. I do know exactly what you mean by arching when doing that lift... easy to do. I've done so on occasion but caught myself, mainly on the last rep of a set. I'd rather lift just a bit less and try to maintain correct form, but it takes a lot of self-discipline. Helps that it's just me in the garage with nobody to try to impress, but I still have to remind myself. :bear_grin:

I'd never heard that one before, but it's a handy rhyme.:bear_thumb:


I was just trying to think of other watering can ideas, when the picture of two Gatorade-type water jugs on the ends of a yoke popped into my head. These are more like coolers, as they're insulated, with the lid that pops on and off. The ideal kind would probably be the type with the spigot that has a lever on top that you can either push down or up to get it to dispense... like a water cooler at your typical office. Maybe that sort of dispenser could be put to use on a large non-insulated bucket, to save weight/size, as opposed to an insulated cooler.

Actually the hardware store would probably have several valves that'd work even better, and all the fittings necessary to rig something up.

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

When I was a teen I was tossing three-wire bales of hay all day in the 4-H Club. Not anymore.

:hahaha: geezer

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

I'd do something simple like an anemic solar pump and old hose (drill holes in a dead one) but 5gal buckets might work.

Take a hole saw, drill a hole in the bottom, make a tapered weight, cone shaped, that plugs the hole. Or, I don't know, how about a round plate that covers the hole with inner tube on top. Then hang a stiff wire down below.

When you tip the bucket slightly, the wire would touch the ground and pop up the weight and let the water drizzle out. It'll leak on the way from the pond, but if it isn't much, shouldn't matter. Water in a yoke is a lot, lot lighter than you'd expect. Taking off one bucket so the balance is off seems to double the weight, oddly.

There are US Army showers that are perfect, with the huge plastic rosette below. How to pull the lever (with a string?) is the question.

Canoe people have the thing you need for a yoke. Try we-no-nah. It's a closed-cell foam pad that sockets in a hard plastic arc. On the arc is a threadstock that drills through your classic yoke. It effectively takes about 10-20lbs off the canoe. Something like this: http://www.sunshine-sports.com/store/1782

I couldn't find the Army canvas bucket-showers, but found this instead:
http://www.kk.org/streetuse/bucket-1.jpg
Inner tube buckets might tip quite nicely.

Or how about a pesticide-water tank on a 6' lashing stand, would give adequate pressure--just have to find a way to fill it. Cistern/rainwater? Carrying buckets int he heat sounds like work.

Corn is extremely heat-sensitive. It won't germinate without it, and needs stiff heat to silk. However, early heat can stunt it too. Just have to know your area and variety. Hopi have special draught-corn that has 10' deep roots that dig down through the sandbanks. May want to look into it.

TS

Re: Chinese Watering Can
 

It seems like a recipe for mold or fungus.

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That depends on if you overwatered or not. I'm talking about retaining moisture vs being bone dry, not soaked ground or standing water.

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That sounds about right. Definitely not a deficit.Anyhow, getting the exercise is what makes it really great.

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I'm glad you brought it up though. It hadn't really occurred to me to try and roughly estimate the actual caloric output vs intake scenario of my operation, I just sort of knew what would work and what wouldn't from previous experience. The real neat thing here is that before too long this place will be self-sustaining so it should be getting easier to come up with these figures, though the actual calories used aspect will never be very exact it's easy enough to slightly overestimate and err on the side of caution.

From a purely subsistence level it is important to note that the figures don't accurately reflect the picture so far. The corn will mostly be used as chickenfeed, thereby reducing caloric efficiency. On the other hand the chickens are getting 30% of their requirements from being allowed to pasture so that makes up a significant portion of the loss of efficiency. The other variable is that the corn isn't grown alone except for this test crop. In a regular season the corn will be grown with pole beans so for the same effort I will be growing a whole extra crop. I'd like to work my Seminole pumpkin squash into the equation for a three sisters style planting, by that point the total caloric output will have totally blown away all process inefficiencies such as using the corn for feed.

I still need to work out what my average harvest sizes will be since my main experience is with citrus and Asian vegetables and I don't know what kind of performance to expect from what I'm growing now. I don't even know how well it will all work out so there'll probably be some changes in the lineup before too long. For instance I would like to explore planting desert king watermelons in the late dry season.