What size water pump for garden?

Looking at getting a gas powered water pump to pull water from a pond and use it to run 4 garden hose sprinklers. Water would travel 250’-300’ to reach garden area. Anyone have experience doing something like that? What works? What doesn’t?

the question is how much lift ?

if the water was dead level with the sprinklers you would need less if that travel is 50 feet up and 200 feet over a lot more


what are you going to use to keep the solids out , algae and such

a suspended suction pickup is a good start

running to a set of gravity tanks then gravity feed water to plants might work better it depends how much distribution you need and how much area you are trying to cover

Pumping to a holding tank and gravity feeding to soaker hoses could save quite a bit of money if that would work for you. It just takes a small 12v pump with a high enough psi rating to pump the distance and lift. I pump water to some calves about 150’ and 20’ or so lift using a $25 pump.
Either way you go, it will depend on the distance, lift, and hose diameter.

That would also cut way down on evaporative water loss lessening the amount of water needing to be pumped. On the garden side water on the roots and not on the leaves and stems cut down on fungal and mildew issues.

Not much grade from pond to garden site. About 4’.

Thought about soaker hoses, but garden is approximately 40’x 200’. Lots of 25’ rows. Used a submersible elect pump to pump water from a cistern last season. That worked to get water to the garden where barrels were filled and plants were watered by hand mostly. Lot of work for a big garden. The cistern didn’t hold enough water to get through the dry summer. So that’s the reason I’m looking at the pond as a water source.

I’d prefer to conserve water and keep it off the plants and only on the roots, I’m just not sure such a system is in the budget. Open to ideas and suggestions. Appreciate the comments.

Don't forget about friction lose also. The further the water has to travel the more friction lose there is.

if your watering 25 foot rows , I would try making up 20-25 foot sections of pvc and lay then at your rows , put a T in the middle with about a 3 foot stand pipe and place a hose in those to feed the water in , have holes drilled about the same as the plant spacing probably have to play with hole size in the pvc making them larger near the end an all in the top of the pipe.

that way low pressure should allow the water to drain out , may need a brush to clear the algae from the holes as they plug up

you have the submersible pump and hosing it sounds like , a few sections of pvc pipe and you would know if it was going to work

when we had a large garden with a water source we had a drain tile that constantly ran a half a barrel to catch the water where it drained into the ditch and a shallow well pump with a foot valve in that barrel about 6 inches off the bottom the total suction distance was about 6 feet and total lift was about 6-8 feet then we used soaker hoses , because we had clear water running out of the tile we didn't have algae issues also I am not sure how to deal with those.

we could basically run what you could run off a regular house spigot could feed , we had no pressure tank but that didn't seem to matter water being free we didn't use much for valves either just always had the hose running when the power was on