IRRIGATION VS. CULTIVATION. 



BY "INDIANA." 



"The mistakes of my life have been many," is the hymn that might 

 be truthfully sung by the irrigator, as well as by many another man. 

 In nothing pertaining to irrigation does he make a greater mistake than 

 in supposing that water alone, without cultivation of the soil, will insure 

 him a crop. Cultivation is just as important to success as irrigation. 



One of the experiment station reports states that it had been found 

 by experiment that good results could be obtained by simply loosening 

 up and cultivating the soil both before and after planting a crop, whereas 

 if this were neglected, fertilizers had to be used to insure any kind of a 

 crop. 



Air is needed as well as water to change the nitrates and phosphates 

 in the soil into foods that can be assimilated by the plant to sustain its 

 life. Hence it is necessary to plow the ground and throw up the sub- 

 soil to the air, thus giving it a much-needed chance to become aerated. 

 One of Franklin's wise maxims was, "Plow deep and you will have corn 

 to keep." 



In irrigating your motto should be, "Not how much but how well," 

 time-worn as it is from its continued use as a class motto for succeeding 

 generations of graduates. Do not go on the principle of the mistaken 

 housewife, who thinks that the more dust she makes in sweeping the 

 cleaner she is getting things, and gauge your chances of a crop by the 

 amount of water you use. It is not the amount of water that gives suc- 

 cess, but the manner of applying it; the knack of getting just enough- at 

 the right time. Often the man who expends the most time, labor and 

 money arid uses the mosc water in irrigating his land has very indiffer- 

 ent crops and he blames the system for what is his own mistake. For 

 in this, as well as in everything else, there is a right and a wrong way 

 to do things. 



It has been truly said that ''The most successful irrigators combine 

 deep plowing with clean cultivation, thus producing the largest amount 

 possible from a limited area." 



Insufficient moisture is not due. so much to lack of rainfall as to 

 unequal distribution of what does fall. And a plan to conserve or save 

 the moisture is of as much benefit (except of course in arid regions) as is 

 irrigation. This conservation of soil moisture, as it is called, is one of 

 the many lessons we may learn from Dame Nature. Go to the woods 

 and see how well she his economized the moisture that fell. The dead 

 leaves that have fallen and the decaying vegetation cover the ground 

 with mulch, which prevents the evaporation of the moisture as well as 



