THE ART OF IRRIGATION. 



127 



there is rarely danger of being a few days 

 too soon with the water. It is always the 

 other way. 



But if you must trust your eye to tell 

 when to water anything, learn to tell in 

 advance of any suffering. Allow nothing 

 to wilt or twist or look yellow, if you can 

 avoid it, for although it may be pulled out 

 all right, something is lost, and there is 

 generally no excuse for it. 



LITTLE FEAR OF OVER-IRRIGATION. 



The proper time to irrigate will vary 

 with every product, every locality and every 

 temperature. As a rule, one should be care- 

 ful about applying water too freely when 

 anything is in bloom. The same when 

 fruit is ripening. But to this latter there 

 are large exceptions, especially with ber- 

 ries to be sold fresh in the local market 

 and fruit that is to be sold to the cannery 

 or shipped but a short distance. Injuring 

 the flavor of fruit with too much water is 

 much exaggerated. Much of the Califor- 

 nia fruit in the eastern market is flat be- 

 cause picked too green, as it must be to 

 stand the long journey. Most of the talk 

 about its being over-irrigated is done by 

 cranks with dry land to sell. Stuff to be 

 shipped far and keep well should not be 

 bloated with water. That is about all 

 there is in it. There is very little danger 

 in watering too often if the ground is well 

 drained and it is not soaked too much. I 

 have seen peaches, plums and pears made 

 very flat and sour, as well as small, on 

 very well drained ground. But it was be- 

 cause the water was running in large 

 quantity almost all the time. I have seen 

 several million times the quantity made 

 small, flat and sour with too little water. 

 Last summer, in my garden, I tried to see 

 how much water a few peach and pear 

 trees would stand. I failed to damage the 

 quality and had the finest I ever saw. 

 But they were not kept in a mud puddle. 

 I watered them every week, but just enough 

 to keep the soil so that it would pack into 

 a ball readily in the hand without any mud 

 clinging to it. It was done by frequent 

 watering with a moderate quantity and 

 digging three days afterward with a potato 

 fork. It is doubtful if any fruit can be 

 hurt as long as the soil is not muddy 

 enough to stick to the hand. And I would 

 rather trust to keeping the soil in that con- 

 dition the whole season through than to 

 wait for anything to show the want of 

 water. . It cannot always be done, especi- 



ally on a large scale, but the more nearly 

 you approach it the better. 



In southern California peaches, apricots, 

 prunes, and most other deciduous fruits, 

 rarely have an "off year," and when they 

 do it is seldom a serious shortage. This 

 is largely due to irrigation of the trees 

 once, and often twice, after the crop is 

 picked. This starts the trees into a new 

 growth before the setting of the fruit buds 

 for the next year. The most regular, as 

 well as the heaviest crops, are from trees 

 thus treated, and it would be well to fol- 

 low this course wherever the climate will 

 permit a late growth in time to harden up 

 the wood to endure the winter. This lat- 

 ter is a point always to be kept in mind, 

 for there are many places where a late 

 growth will be nipped by frosts, while in 

 other places it will not. But this recuper- 

 ation of the tree in the same season will 

 doubtless give it a longer and healthier 

 life, even if it does not save it from an 

 occasional off year. 



After what is above said you will see 

 how impossible it is to say how often dur- 

 ing the season one should water. It will 

 vary with the soil, the climate, the age of 

 the trees, the nature, and especially the 

 size of the crop, the amount of hot weather, 

 etc. In 1894 I had to irrigate a number 

 of trees twelve times, because the rainfall 

 of the preceding winter had been so very 

 light and the subsoil was dry. The trees 

 were heavily loaded, and I could get but 

 a short run of water and a small stream. 

 Every tree carried its fruit through in fine 

 shape, but if I could have controlled my 

 water supply I could have done it with 

 four irrigations, and had the preceding 

 winter been up to the average in rainfall 

 two good wettings would have sufficed. 



SOME GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS. 



In general, it is not necessary to water 

 as often as one would suppose, provided 

 the ground is well soaked at each time and 

 good cultivation is kept up. With a winter 

 rainfall of twenty inches, the average of a 

 highly productive and extensive area in 

 southern California, the last rain of any 

 value being rarely later than the 1st of 

 May, followed by seven months of sun- 

 shine, with an air most of the time drier 

 than is ever felt east of the Mississippi, 

 and often intensely dry for weeks at a time, 

 the periods of irrigation on well cultivated 

 land run nearly as follows: 



Oranges and lemons, four times a year. 



