THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST, 



175 



Late frosts have done considerable 

 damage to all my fruit trees, and what 

 at one time promised to be a good 

 fruit year has been sadly injured. 

 Yours, etc., 



A. A. Wright. 

 Renfrew, Ont. 



IRRIGATIOX. 



A paper on the subject of ii-rigation 

 was read by Col. Heni-y W. Wilson, 

 before the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society, which was I'eeeived with 

 marked interest and attention. The 

 writer concluded liis very exhaustive 

 essay with the following summary : — 



It is very evident from common ex- 

 perience that injurious droughts are in- 

 creasing in frequency, and tlie careful 

 consideration of the subject will develop 

 the following simple but significant 

 truths : 



That whatever the cause of this 

 deficiency of moistui-e, the simplest and 

 cheapest remedy at the hands of the 

 agiiculturist is irrigation. That when- 

 ever a supply of water can be obtained, 

 the cost of pumping it will not exceed 

 three cents per thousand gallons for an 

 amount of ten thousand gallons per 

 da}* pumped to a height of fifty feet 

 above the surface of the water, which 

 cost will include the necessaiy i-epairs 

 and depreciation and interest on the 

 cost of the necessary fixtures and re- 

 servoir. 



That should a brook or spring not be 

 available, there are but few places where 

 an adequate supply may not be obtain- 

 ed by sinking wells. 



That the cost and arrangement of 

 the work will vary so much with the 

 different locations and circumstances 

 that no schedule of cost can be given, 

 but the cases will be i-are where $750 

 to 81,000, discreetly expended, will not 

 furnish ample water for the irrigation 

 of fifteen acres of tillage land. 



That the preservation of a single 



crop, in a year of imusual drought, 

 would reimburse the whole expense. 



That the positive assurance of im- 

 munity from the eflfects of drought 

 should induce all cultivators to secure 

 at once the means of irrigating their 

 land if possible. 



That besides the security afforded in 

 the case of an excessive drought, it 

 will be found that water can be used 

 very profitably in almost any season 

 ■with a great variety of crops. And 

 lastly — 



The great wonder is that our farmers 

 and horticulturists have disregarded the 

 matter for so lontf a time. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH CELERY. 



N. Y. AGRICULTUEAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



One of the most popular, perhaps, 

 with the exception of lettuce, the most 

 popular of salad plants, is celery. It 

 is not many years ago when celery - 

 growing was one of the mysteries of 

 gardening, so far as current opinion 

 went, and the carefully-grown plantings 

 were transferred to deep trenches at 

 the bottom of which much manure had 

 been spaded, while a laborious process 

 of earthing up was successively pur- 

 sued. Market gardeners, however, who 

 are usually the first to introduce new 

 processes of growing, on account of the 

 competition they have to meet, found 

 that the celery grown upon the surface 

 and earthed up once for all at the latter 

 part of the season, furnished profitable 

 results, and this latter method seems 

 now mainly the one pursued for 

 commercial pui-jjoses. In the private 

 gai'den, however, the trenching is in 

 many cases continued, and it, therefore, 

 seemed to us desirable to know the 

 comparative merits of these two 

 methods, for if surface planting is equal 

 in its product to the trench planting, it 

 is far to Vje jn-eferred on account of the 

 less labor involved. 



