IRRIGATION. 61 
those on the slough bed bore a heavy crop and did not seem to know 
that we were having a hot, dry summer. We set about an acre of 
the piece to strawberries, last spring, and we have enough more 
plants than we would have grown on ordinary dry ground to pay 
for the expense of tiling the whole piece. 
When I went to the state fair last September, I saw many acres in 
the Minnesota valley that now answer no other purpose than 
to hold the world together, that might be easily drained and made 
the most valuable land in the valley. Where such land can be ob- 
tained, using it is the easiest and cheapest way to Solve the irriga- 
tion question; but by all means putin tile—the open ditch is an 
abomination. Any one that has what the Yankees call “gumption” 
can lay tile by having some one who knows tell him how. 
We have a windmill and elevated tank, 300 feet of three-fourth inch 
iron pipe and 150 feet of hose, and can reach four or more acres of 
land, and find the water pays for itself each year. We use it in 
transplanting, getting strawberry runners to root, etc.; but it does 
not yield water enough for a growing crop. We watered some peas 
last summer—rows five or six rods long. They were planted in 
double rows sixteen inches apart and three feet between the rows. 
We took a Warren hoe, madea shallow ditch between the double 
row, put the hose at the upper end, turned on the water, and it took 
some thirty barrels before it would fill the trench at the lower end. 
Where any one has a well and tank it might pay to put in pipe and 
hose, keep the mill pumping all the time and use the extra water 
for irrigation, but I could not advise any one to put in a plant just 
for the purpose of irrigation unless there was abundance of water 
near the surface. 
IRRIGATING SMALL FRUIT WITH AN ARTESIAN WELL. 
ELMER Kk. WOLCOTT, SPARTA, WIS. 
I have about three and a half acres of blackberries, raspberries 
and strawberries on rather sandy soil. In 1893, my berries were 
nearly a failure on account of the dry weather, so I decided to put 
down an artesian well to irrigate with. I put down a four-inch well 
in the center of the berry patch, 280 feet deep, the water rising about 
ten feet above ground, and throwing about 150 barrels per hour. 
The well cost, including all pipe and hose and a pipe into the house 
and one out to the barn, about $275.00. It being the last of July when 
the well was finished, it was too late to irrigate much, but in 1894, I 
began irrigating the last of May, and with the exception of five or 
six days irrigated for three months, the weather during this time 
being very hot and dry, with norain. I use 225 feet of two-inch iron 
pipe, which I attach to the well, and lay on top of the ground out 
into the berries. Then I put on seventy-five feet of two-inch hose on 
the end of the pipe, and then soak up the ground as far as the hose 
will reach on each side of the pipe; and by taking off two or three 
lengths of pipe at a time, gradually work back to the well, and then 
take up the pipe and Jay it in another direction, until the piece is all 
gone over. It generally took me about seven days to irrigate the 
three and one-half acres. 
