Part I.] Fish Ponds. 35 



an acre of water, which he expects to supply with one wind- 

 mill and one pump. Of course the ponds can be filled during 

 the winter and early spring and at other times when water is 

 not needed on the garden, allowing a more liberal use of water 

 when it is needed. Mr. Bailey runs a farm and gives only a 

 small portion of his time to the garden business. However, he 

 tried to impress upon my mind the fact that one could not have 

 a good garden, even with an irrigating plant, unless consid- 

 erable time was given to the care of it. Admitting that it 

 takes some time to care for the garden, it surely pays to have 

 one of the best vegetable gardens in the country, and that, too, 

 in a country where little or no garden stuff can be raised with- 

 out irrigation. j_ ^ j., 



Unfortunately Mr. Bailey has not kept any account of the 

 amount of the garden stuff raised and sold and its value. This 

 spring, from March 28 to May 18, he sold over $100 worth of 

 rhubarb from a patch of five rows, each 230 feet long, and only 

 a part— scarcely half — of the crop was gathered. Better and 

 finer rhubarb I have never seen anywhere. The hills are from 

 twelve to twenty inches in diameter and contained when ex- 

 amined from fifteen to forty good stalks each. Mr. Bailey 

 gave me a half dozen stalks pulled from one of the first hills 

 we came to. One of the stalks, stripped of its elephant-ear 

 leaf, weighed fourteen ounces. There were other stalks in the 

 patch that would undoubtedly have weighed a pound or more. 

 A bed of asparagus three times as large as the rhubarb 

 patch furnishes an abundance of one of the best early vege- 

 tables that can be grown in any country, both for private table 

 use and for the market. , ^ ^, . , . 



In this garden I saw sweet potatoes growing at their best. 

 Mr. Bailey dug a hill for me September 2 that contained 15 

 potatoes ; another hill dug a week later contained 21 potatoes 

 that weighed eleven pounds ; another hill, dug about the middle 

 of October, contained about 30 potatoes, a third of a bushel, 

 that weighed eighteen pounds. ., . , ^ i 



Grapevines, berry patches and friut trees that had been 

 planted around the edge of the garden in order that they too 

 might be irrigated when water could be spared, were all doing 

 well. I noticed a patch of the wonderful Burbank "wonder 

 berry." It was surely a wonder to behold, bearing loads of 

 fruit that weighted the vines to the ground. After tasting 

 them, I wondered and wondered again and again that any one 

 would care for them, as they are even more tasteless and in- 

 sipid than frost-bitten, diaphoretic and aperient elderberries. 

 Judging from Mr. Bailey's experience with his garden, it is 

 only reasonable to suppose that such an irrigated garden 

 patch would easily make returns of from $300 to $500 per year 

 if properly cared for, besides furnishing an abundance of 

 fresh vegetables and fruits for family use. Such a garden is 



