174 



CALIFORNIA FRUITS I HOW TO GROW THEM 



ditches are torn up during the season of cultivation and have to be renewed 

 every year. 



I use* a level set on a frame 8.25 feet long and about 2.5 feet high (one 

 leg longer than the other) to make any grade desired. Then I drag its 

 length on the ground after getting the level, and can mark the linq of ditch 

 nearly half as fast as a man can walk. 



During the last ten years I have used many thousand feet of pipe! in irri- 

 gating, but have found it too expensive to be practicable, and it frequently 

 gets clogged, causing much trouble. ' The zigzag method of taking the water 

 down hills on the dry ridges, distributing to right and left, picking it up 

 again in zigzag ditches at the end of the rows or system, to be used again 

 on lower ground, brings into use the largest quantity where it is most needed 

 and utilizes it all without waste. 



Zigzag ditches. 



Large furrow system on hillsides with zigzag ditches for distribution, catchment, 



and redistribution. 



Irrigating by Small Furrows. It has already been suggested 

 that recently the small furrow method of irrigation is undergoing cer- 

 tain modifications. The occasion for the change is that in certain of the 

 heavier soils, particularly, the use of water in many shallow furrows 

 followed by cultivation results in the formation of a compact layer, and 

 this prevents the percolation of the water into the subsoil. This dis- 

 covery led many Southern growers to resort to fewer and deeper fur- 

 rows, and to new devices to enable the tree to get the benefit of the 

 water. There has been wide use of the subsoil plow, with a wedge- 

 shaped foot attached to a slim standard rising to the ordinary beam. 

 The standard opposes its thin edge to the soil so as to cleave it with 

 the least difficulty, and the foot, passing through or beneath the hard- 

 pan, lifts and breaks it. The result of the subsoiling is to open a way 



