Watering new trees far from the house

We’re going to be planting 250 seedling trees this spring about 300 yards away from our house and I’ve been thinking about how to get water to them while they get established. I picked up a 275 gallon IBC water tank for next to nothing that I can put on a small trailer and pull with my wheeler. I’ve been researching 12 volt inline pumps to move the water a lot faster than just gravity, but they’re anywhere from $100-150 and most do around 300 GPH. My question is why couldn’t I rig a 1200GPH bilge pump with a simple on/off switch attached up near the end of my hose? They’re available for $20 bucks or so. Any flaws in my design that anyone can come up with?

Rain dance.

LOL, yep! I’ll probably get this all put together and we’ll have the wettest spring/summer ever.

The bilge pump will work only problem I can see is if you fill the tank full it would be 2300 lbs which would be very hard to move with a wheeler unless its down a gravel road.

Brian, I did a little larger planting than yours …. lol just under 30,000 trees on my farm.

Keep me in mind that tank you have when full will weigh over 2000 pounds and be tough pulling with an atv. We placed tanks that stayed in the field and I hauled water with my big case tractor with a tank on a reinforced hay wagon. Gravity fed to secondary tank and used 12v pumps to pump out in I think 3/4” hose as needed. We also flood watered a lot by just gravity dropping water out of the tank from the wagon.

Give me a call when you have time and I’ll give you a lot of other great info I learned when we did our forestry project 262 617 5161

I would think, if you run an 1.5″ – 2″ hose gravity will move water faster than you want.

Brian G wrote:

We’re going to be planting 250 seedling trees this spring about 300 yards away from our house and I’ve been thinking about how to get water to them while they get established. I picked up a 275 gallon IBC water tank for next to nothing that I can put on a small trailer and pull with my wheeler. I’ve been researching 12 volt inline pumps to move the water a lot faster than just gravity, but they’re anywhere from $100-150 and most do around 300 GPH. My question is why couldn’t I rig a 1200GPH bilge pump with a simple on/off switch attached up near the end of my hose? They’re available for $20 bucks or so. Any flaws in my design that anyone can come up with?

Can’t help you with the watering problem but I would like to thank you for planting the tree’s. I hate driving past housing developments and seeing them clear cutting every tree in sight just to make building easier. It takes a long time to grow trees.

Thanks again.

We did similar to what your going to do with the water tank. Like said a lot of weight for a UTV so used the tractor. we have a 1 1/4″ line hooked to the tank and you will find that with gravity feed that’s about all the faster you will want. the ground won’t take it any faster than that and you will get more running away from tree where you don’t want it.

Thanks, Randy!

That’s a great point, Joe. Thanks. I should have mentioned I do have a small Kubota tractor as an option, I just need to add a receiver hitch to it.

Gravity + hose = success!

Brian G wrote:

My question is why couldn’t I rig a 1200GPH bilge pump with a simple on/off switch attached up near the end of my hose? They’re available for $20 bucks or so. Any flaws in my design that anyone can come up with?

Bilge pump ratings are a joke. A 1200 GPH bilge pump will only move that much water if it’s connected to a perfect electrical supply with no resistance and then it has to be pumping the water with zero lift and off the edge of a cliff.

My solution for “portable water” is barrels because I can carry 2 full 55-gallon drums in the bucket of my tractor.

I fill them and pump the water out with this terrific pump from Harbor Freight. I’ve used this setup for years, the pump puts out water way faster than a standard home garden hose and makes for fast work when watering trees. The whole setup is portable and I don’t need to try to run or maintain irrigation lines.

What kinda trees? Planted 1200 red pine and 1200 white pine 10ish yrs ago. No watering. I bet I didn’t lose 5 red pines. White pines on the other hand were a different story. Lost a lot of them. We are in blow sand country so even with rain soil is still very dry.

been following this thread with interest. i get you need to water trees to get them started, but how much watering do you plan on doing???/ and how long???

I’ve talked to several outfits that do tree trimming and stump grinding, alot of there work, especially the stump grinder guys, comes from people with lawn irrigation systems because there is enough water the trees dont need to have there roots go deep to find moisture.

i get every tree is a bit different, trees like poplar and pine just dont have the root system to hold then in high winds like say an oak or black walnut. in long periods of no rain i’ll take a water hose and let it trickle out just so it comes out of the hose for a good 8-10 hours, even do that in the fall before freeze up.

just curious!!!!!

Without knowing your whole layout, just throwing out an idea. Would getting a couple rolls of 1/2″ PEX tubing work? Run it from the house to the trees with a ball valve at the end. Then install a TEE and run a loop (loop is important for even pressure) through the trees and staked in place every so often. Drill a small hole on the top of the tubing at each tree. May need to experiment with hole size but if done right the ball valve could be used to turn it into a drip system.

You could even get packs of drip emitter heads for pretty cheap that can be pressed into the tubing holes and would make it a true drip system.

This would allow you to automate the system as much or as little as you’d like.

Just a sample of the emmiters available

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C3LP1KR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_ST1JK1VSVTF7VE7WH10T

Great ideas, everyone, and lots to think about. Basically we have the house, shop, and barn in the front third of a 20 acre lot. We have 13 acres of hay and 3 acres of wetland that connects to a big wetland to our east. I get a little income off the hay but the plan is to slowly restore native habitat, trees, grasses, pollinator friendly stuff. I have a small patch of woods on the south line, furthest from the road that connects to about 30 acres of woods. I have a deer stand and a 1/2 acre food plot back there but the deer don’t use it much I think because there’s too much visibility from the road. The property was a dairy farm decades ago, the barn had 40 or stancions for milking that have since been removed and replaced with class 5. When I tilled the ground for the food plot I could still smell the manure. My goal is to gradually, starting from the back, add trees, shrubs, etc to make it all more natural. My daughter hopes to buy the place after we retire and can’t manage it any more, in 15-20 years, so I want to leave behind something really cool for future generations. The idea for a watering system came out of a desire to be able to give the new trees an occasional drink only when they really need it, over the first few weeks after planting and then in July/August if it’s hot and dry and then again before freeze up.

One thought I had was to put a 55 gallon drum on an elevated platform out there and tap into the bottom of that with a drop irrigation system to cover the trees. That way I’d just have to occasionally pull the big tank out there and refill it when needed. I’ve also got a pumpkin patch and a sweet corn patch, again too far from the house to pull water from there. Running plastic pipe with emitters or just holes punched every 6 inches down the corn rows, gravity fed from a 55 gallon plastic drum should also work. At the corn patch, I have the advantage of the sewer mound being close by so I can place the barrel on the side hill of the mound about 6 feel above the level of the corn patch.

Lastly, I’m doing this on a small budget, scrounging up materials from other farms and back yards in the country. It’s been fun and rewarding so far, gives me something to do after work on the weekdays and keeps the weekends free for fishing.

Thanks again for all the great ideas.

Just for engineering sake. Let’s say you have 250 drip emitters that use 1 gallon per hour. That is 250gph total. If you used a 55 gallon drum it would be empty in less than 15 minutes(that is if there is enough water pressure to actually get them to run properly). And 250 trees will likely need a lot more than .2 gallons of water to keep them alive in the heat of summer. Something to think about when you consider the scale of these projects.