IRRIGATION IN FIELD AND GAR- 

 DEN. 



BY PROFESSOR E. J. WICKSON. 



Irrigation should be recognized as an agricultural art of very wide 

 applicability and value. Its association with the idea of desert recla- 

 mation has blinded the public mind to its value for legions where the 

 need of reclamation does not exist. Irrigation is a means of soil im- 

 provement to be employed, like other means of improvement, when 

 the soil needs it. Water is the most important food of plants, not 

 alone because it enters in such volume into their tissues, but because 

 without it in adequate amount the plant can not use other foods in 

 sufficient quantity. No one questions the wisdom of the saving and 

 storing of manures, nor the wisdom of generous outlay for commercial 

 fertilizers when required. The same is true of soil improvement by 

 means of drainage. There should be a similar feeling in regard to 

 irrigation. 



The most diligent culture and the most generous fertilization are 

 often made of no avail, and actual loss is sometimes incurred because 

 the farmer has not prepared himself to supply water when needed. 

 The water, which he could often provide for a mere fraction of his 

 expenditure for fertilizers, often for less annual cost than the interest 

 on his investment in underdrainage, he has neglected to have ready 

 for use, and he sees the hope of return for his year's labor and expen- 

 diture fade away during a few weeks of drought. There have been 

 cases where water has been s-ored at considerable expense as a pro- 

 tection against fire in barns and has remained unused while some val- 

 uable crop was burning up in the garden. Such losses are largely 

 due to two things: First, the notion that irrigation is of importance 

 only in arid regions: and, second, ignorance of the ease and cheapness 

 with which a farm water supply can be stored and distributed. It is 

 very important that the value and availability of water for irrigation 

 shouid be recognized and a supply provided on each farm. 



Irrigation, moreover, is not merely a recourse to insure the safety 

 of a crop. It has been demonstrated beyond question both by prac- 

 tical experience and by systematic experiment that growth and pro- 

 duction can be profitably pushed by irrigation even when the natural 

 moisture seems ample, and in this respect irrigation aligns itself with 

 fertilization and cultivation as a factor in intensive culture. 



Another error grows out of the large scale upon which irrigation 

 is generally known to be carried on, involving canals and ditches too 



