244 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



raise better fruit than Mr. Taylor could with his irrigation, but they 

 had to pick off about one-half the fruit before it was ripe, and then 

 the reinaining- half would not gfrow as large as that of Mr. Taylor's 

 orchard which he had irrigated. 



It interested to me find out how it was they could raise such fruit in 

 such an unusually dry season as that was. I found upon in- 

 quiry that the secret of it was keeping a dust blanket about five 

 inches deep on the top, and just assoon as there was a little rain — 

 sometimes it does rain there in the springor summer — just as soon 

 as the rain is over they cultivate. The top soil must be kept loose 

 and dr^' just like ashes for four or five inches from the top, and be- 

 low that the roots reach down into a soil that contains water from 

 the vinderlying strata of clay, about twenty, twentj'-five or thirty 

 feet below, and that moisture keeps working up during the summer. 

 How does that water get there? It coines from melting snow. They 

 get very little rain in the sumtner time, because it can never rain 

 unless the air that contains that rain is cold; it must be cold before 

 that moisture can be condensed so it can come down. In the 

 summer time that is a warm country. The thermometer stood 108° in 

 the shade the day I was up there. In the summer time the wind that 

 comes over the mountains grows wanner and warmer itistead of 

 colder, so there is very little if an}' precipitation during the sumiuer 

 time; but in winter it is cold there, sometimes it gets nearly as cold 

 as it does in Minnesota. The cold winds come in contact with the 

 w^armer atinosphere, and so there is a large fall of snow. The snow 

 is sometimes nearly three or four feet deep, and the melting of this 

 large snow fall causes this vast reservoir of water upon which they 

 draw in summer; but unless they keep this dust blanket on the 

 surface in the summer they cannot raise anything. I want to say 

 here that in those orchards they had under irrigation the growth of 

 the limbs was something astonishing-. Thepeople were verj* careful 

 to see that nothing whatever grew in those orchards except the trees. 

 I asked if they raised any grain or planted any vegetables in their 

 orchards. They said they would not have a single thing that would 

 draw the moisture out of the ground. That is something we have 

 to learn here. Thej^ will not allow a single plant to grow in those 

 orchards. Everything is just as clean as this iloor. They will not 

 allow anything to grow but the trees. Each tree gets all the water 

 they can give it, and its roots run down deep where the water is 

 coming up slowly by capillary attraction. I asked the depth to 

 which they had to go to get their water for a well, and they told me 

 twentj^ twenty-five to thirty feet, and then they strike this clay, and 

 on the top of this clay they strike an abundance of water. 



It looked to ine as though it would be impossible for a great many 

 years to come to irrigate that country as a whole. They have got to 

 go up the Columbia River about a hundred miles or so, and the banks 

 are so very high that it is impossible to get the water from the river 

 without ditching. The river is perhaps 150 feet below the bank, so 

 you see that irrigation would be very difficult. The one thing which 

 struck me as the most important was that nothing must be planted 

 in the orchard that will take any moisture out of the ground that 



