THE IRRIGATION AGE. 159 



perimenting upon such garden irrigation is the place where the gar- 

 dens and orchards are the largest and the "mostesf and the water 

 most plentiful and the "lift" the least. 



1 count that a garden where any fruit, but orchard fruits, and any 

 vegetables are raised, whether the extent of the culture is measured 

 by the size of a cotter's onion-bed or the hundred acre field of some 

 potato man or cabbage grower. But when it comes to applying water 

 to such cultures it makes an enormous difference in proportional ex- 

 pense, whether our estimate is based on a small tract or a large one. 

 In fact the expense of planting and cultivating a kitchen garden is so 

 much greater per capita (cabbage "Capita,"' for instance) than a market 

 garden that not half our Kansas farmers within the rain belt ever feel 

 able to afford the luxury of plentiful supplies of vegetables and fruits 

 for their own families. It is not that the farmers of Kansas are more 

 indifferent to the flavor of garden "sass"than their fellow craftsmen of 

 other states, but that from one end of the country to the other the 

 table of the average farmer is conspicuously less furnished forth with 

 fruits and vegetables then the table of the average townsman. This 

 is so because it costs the farmer more to raise his vegetables than it 

 costs the townsman to buy them. 



If now to the excessive cost of diminutive cultivation be added 

 the proportionately excessive cost of diminutive irrigation the com- 

 bined expenditure reaches proportions that most farmers will not 

 stand. It remains that excepting among people who put a value upon 

 Nature's beauties not measured in current funds, irrigation in horti- 

 culture will be confined to those gardens where stuff is raised to sell. 

 Irrigation, if left to itself, will begin where the conditions as to soil, 

 climate, water, transportation and markets are the most favorable and 

 will thence spread through increasing difficulties to the limit beyond 

 which it will not pay as a business venture. But when once the 

 methods of applying water are generally understood, and the difficul- 

 ties jn the way of elevating it are worked out and familiarized and we 

 come to appreciate the prodigious increase in yield and certainty when 

 drouth is eliminated and the scorching, unclouded sun is converted into 

 an adjunct of growth when all these are accomplished thousands 

 who are not exacting as to the outlay for the gustatory, arboreal, or 

 floral embellishment of their homes will continue the work begun for 

 profit and carry it on as a labor of love and adornment till Kansas 

 shall blossom like the rose. The argument in favor of irrigation for 

 gardens rests at last upon the fact that fruits and vegetables are 

 mostly water. Potatoes are 70 to 80 per cent water: strawberries 85 

 per cent water; turnips 90 per cent: apples 84 per cent; peaches 84 per 

 cent: and water-melons something over 100 per cent water. There is 

 no kind of culture that can compare with horticulture in this particu- 

 lar of appropriating water except cow culture. Milk is also mainly 



