378 



1HE IRRIGATION AGE. 



Good drainage, natural or artificial, is 

 essential to success. Trees are impatient 

 of wet feet. 



Good tillage increases the available food 

 supply of the soil, and also conserves its 

 moisture. 



Tillage should be begun just as soon as 

 the ground is dry enough in the spring, 

 and should be repeated as often as once in 

 ten days throughout the growing seasons, 

 which extends from spring until July or 

 August. 



Only cultivated crops should be allowed 

 in orchards early in the season. Grain 

 and hay should never be grown. 



Even-hoed or cultivated crops rob the 

 trees of moisture and fertility if they are 

 allowed to stand above the tree roots. 



Watch a sod orchard. It will begin to 

 fail before you know it. 



Probably nine-tenths of the apple or- 

 chards are in sod, and many of them are 

 meadows. Of course they are failing. 



The remedy of these apple failures is to 

 cut down many of the orchards. For the 

 remainder of the treatment is cultivation, 

 spraying the trinity of orthodox apple 

 growing. 



Potash is the chief fertilizer to be ap- 

 plied to fruit trees, particularly after they 

 come into bearing. 



Potash may be had in wood ashes and 

 muriate of potash. It is most commonly 

 used in the latter form. An unusual ap- 

 plication of potash should be made upon 

 bearing orchards, 500 pounds to the acre. 

 Phosphoric acid is the second important 

 fertilizer to be applied artificially to or- 

 chards. Of the plain superphosphates, 

 from 300 to 500 pounds may be applied to 

 the acre. 



Nitrogen can be obtained cheapest by 

 means of thorough tillage (to promote 

 nitrification) and nitrogenous green man- 

 ures. 



Barn manures are generally more econ- 

 nomically used when applied to farm crops 

 than when applied to orchards; yet they 



can be used with good results, particularly 

 when rejuvenating the old orchards. 



BEET SUGAR IN MICHIGAN. 



The Bay City Sugar Co., of Essexville, 

 which has the largest factory of its kind in 

 Michigan, has begun operations for the 

 season. The beet shed has a capacity for 

 10,000 tons, and upward of 7,000 tons 

 have already been delivered by the farm- 

 ers. 



There is excellent prospect of another 

 sugar factory being erected at Essexville 

 by outside capital. It will cost $1,500,000, 

 and will be the largest sugar mill east of 

 California. 



It is proposed to utilize the Boyce. Pen- 

 niman and Boutwell tracts of land, cover- 

 ing several hundred acres, underlaid with 

 coal, which will be mined solely for the 

 use of the mill. 



IMPROVING FARM VALUES 

 WITH IRRIGATION. 



The universal use of irrigation in the 

 West has practically revolutionized farm 

 values in many regions. These methods 

 of supplying the crops with water are 

 many, but they all show an amount of 

 adaption to conditions that proves the ex- 

 istence of Yankee genius here yet. There 

 are more varieties of windmills for pump- 

 ing up water than one could describe 

 in a week. These windmills are not ex- 

 pensive affairs, but in most cases are built 

 of ordinary articles picked up on the farm 

 or in secondhand shops. They perform 

 the work required of them satisfactorily, 

 and tha| is all one can ask of them. The 

 construction of a good working windmill 

 on any farm, and a pumping attachment, 

 with irrigation canals and reservoir, adds 

 100 or 200 per cent to the value of a farm 

 in a region where summer droughts are 

 heavy drawbacks to farming. With little 

 extra work during the winter season it is 

 an easy matter to make such improvements 

 on almost any farm. The system can be 



