Rain water collection as only water supply in school gardens

[Dawn Cleaves]

I'm a new garden coordinator for a school district in north Texas. The district guidelines require gardens use rain water in catchment tanks from the roof's only. How do I work around this so that the harvest can be fed to the kids.

As soon as I learned this I went the the extension office and other gardeners, and no one see's a problem using the water to water the crops. The problem is in washing the tools, containers for harvest and the produce itself. I would think there needs to be a protocol for not using the the rainwater on edible parts within 24 hours of harvest. This would allow some time for solar sanitation of any funk there might be. 

USDA Food Safety tips for school gardening mentions testing the water in cisterns annually. This leads me to believe they think rainwater catchment is fine. But where do you get the water tested, and what are you testing for?

Slow Foods protocol in the GTC says water supply must be municipal.

I've been told the reason for the policy is the expense of the water and that rainwater is the only way to be fully sustainable. 

Anyone else use only rainwater in your garden? 

It was suggested I bring buckets of water out to the garden for washing, however the second you dip dirty hands in the water it's non potable so what you really need is running municipal water. Thoughts?

[Rick Sherman]

Hi Dawn,

It's all about minimizing risks.  yes, the safest way to ensure that nothing wonky happens is to use municipal water.  However, many folks opt to do something like you describe for demonstration purposes and educational purposes.  if you do decide to do this, consider the following:

*use the rain water for bedding and non-food plants

*test the water.  Contact your local extension for testing options in your area..  but also I've heard there's inexpensive kits available from Home Depot and there's a ton online at amazon  such, but I don't know as to the validity of them or how well they work..  they typically test for lead, bacteria, pesticide, ph level etc.

The thing to realize about watering systems is that the science tells us that some of the potential "bad stuff" in water systems or wells doesn't actually get up to the flowering part of plants.  but, you would not want "bad" water to be used on the surface of plant parts that would be harvested.  So it's one thing to use for irrigation, quite another to be used to wash the lettuce.

[Suzie Kabat]

Maybe you could use one of these 5gal containers with a spigot (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FVJLYZ4/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_NfDlDbKNA5HK8) filled with potable water and transported out in a wagon? It's inconvenient, but would work for washing.

They also make larger polypropylene containers with built in wheels and handles, but they're closer to $90.

[Greg Ellis]

Hi Dawn,

I would argue with them that as long as they are watering lawns and flushing toilets with municipal water, the garden and the food that kids are going to eat deserve it too.

But really, the cost of the water is not as great as many people expect.  Gardens on drip irrigation come out to a few hundred dollars per year, all the hand washing and produce washing included.  If you know your irrigation system and the local water rates, maybe doing the calculation for them would add to your argument.  I'd also consider whether there are areas of lawn that could be removed to offset the garden.  The districts around here pay several hundred thousand dollars per year to water lawns, many of which aren't used.  Some are wising up.

I've seen this policy in local districts quickly change when the district is confronted with parent will, the actual calculations, and a full consideration of the irrationality of denying water to the gardens on the basis of cost.

Good luck, and keep us updated!

Greg

On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 5:21:21 PM UTC-7, Dawn Cleaves wrote:

[Moses Thompson]

We use rainwater extensively and have our gardens certified by our state health department for cafeteria use. It took years of political work to get where we are with the health dept and a lot of back and forth on best practices and SOPs. 

For testing we had help from our local university. They tested for heavy metals, staphylococcus, and E. coli. 

Here a link to our best practices:

https://www.azdhs.gov/documents/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/food-safety-environmental-services/school-garden-program/best-practices-rainwater-harvesting.pdf

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[Dawn Cleaves]

For your drip irrigation, are you doing gravity fed drip or do you have a pump to pressurize for the 20 psi emitters. What do you do to start seeds? I find that generally drip designs are spaced too far apart for new seedlings to get to the water.  How do you deal with different crops that need different water spacing? Carrots then watermelon.  Are you changing out the drip with each season? 

I've got 2 schools with pumps and manual hoses. 

1 school with a pump, drip emitters on 1 foot centers down 3 lines in 4x8 beds with a timer. Here is where I learned that seeds not close to the emitters don't sprout.  The soil let's the water go straight down with very little spreading.  

And 1 school with no pump, no power where I've installed a gravity feed drip in the pollinator garden but the vegetable beds are hand watered. 

None of the schools have first flushes.  

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[Greg Ellis]

Hi Dawn,

Our drip is run off of municipal water for all our gardens, so I can't easily advise for an off-grid system.  You have quite a challenge there!!  We have installed a small solar pump at one garden which has a tank that uses municipal water restocked by truck periodically (it doesn't rain often enough in CA to do catchment for a year-round garden).  This has helped with hand watering.

We have fine-tuned our drip system though, which I do know lots about.  We ran into the same dilemma all irrigation-dependent gardeners face with the trade-offs between sprinklers that give better coverage for seeds vs. drip that is more suitable for established plants.  We found that by using in-line emitters at 6" spacings and using 3 to 5 parallel lines per 4' wide bed, met both needs.  When direct seeding, we simply run the system for shorter, more frequent periods (about 10 minutes, 2 or 3x per day, depending on crop and season), planting directly along the line.  You could try even shorter, more frequent times as for small amounts of water the capillary action of the soil will be greater than the force of gravity, and will tend to spread and lift the water rather than sink it.  The soil all along the line saturates well with this schedule, allowing the seeds to grow.  As plants mature, or if we are planting from starts, we reduce the frequency and duration (20 min every day or every other day, depending on crop and season).

We have also added small valves to each line of tubing, so that we can shut off a line to vary the spacing of the lines.

We can leave these systems in the ground year-round and mulch and amendments can be added around them, and they are easily pulled back if we need to do intensive soil work in the bed.

We also have found using straw, or even newspaper that is soaked in water have helped with weeds suppression and increase in soil moisture retention.

Hope this helps!

Greg

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[Dawn Cleaves]

The new rule just out. School gardens in our district now must use municipal water only. No Rain water allowed. .... Not exactly what I was going for. 

Thank you to everyone's help. You helped me make my case that we needed access to municipal water to meet food safety standard. Here's my document I created for the district to review their rain water only policy. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18WDE8yqY-gJKQyd-HhqJvbB12XvfZ82QqN-QgSzIY-8/edit?usp=sharing

Now I have to go to the city and extension office to see if they will revise their rain water policy in a way that is doable for schools to use rain water on none edible gardens. 

Thank you, 

Dawn

On Monday, July 15, 2019 at 7:21:21 PM UTC-5, Dawn Cleaves wrote: