THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The Art of Irrigation 



CHAPTER SEVEN 



By T. S. VAN DYKE 



Suppose you decide to irrigate in lands, have them 

 laid out with perfect slope and perfect level at right 

 angles, so that you can run a sheet of water not over 

 a quarter of an inch thick over the whole area without 

 running fast enough to be muddy ; in fact, to be as near 

 to rain as it can be made without a spray thrower. 

 Even a watering pot will make a sheet of water very 

 quickly and unless extraordinary care be taken it will 

 soon have the sheet muddy. Surely the best thing is 

 this running the thinnest kind of a sheet in perfect 

 lands. And yet you are not happy. In a very few days 

 the plants that came up so fine are looking tired again 



heap for dozens of feet. Over this he spreads a thin 

 blanket of wet earth by running water over it for an 

 hour or so, generally less, and in this blanket he plants 

 his crop. The idea that the dry dust below could sap 

 the moisture downward as fast as the sun and dry air 

 can sap it upward is the last that will ever occur to him. 

 Amazing as the statement may seem, it takes the great 

 majority of people years to learn this, even on the 

 desert. If so, what may be expected where the rainfall 

 is considerable, but not enough? Simply this people 

 going on for years and making money, but making 

 less than they could make with the same amount of 

 time and labor and never suspecting it. When things 

 begin to wilt the regular orthodox performance is to 

 pour on just enough water again to wet the same thin 

 skin. Stuff revives at once to fail again in a few days 

 and be revived as-ain for a few days in the same old 

 way. Whatever the crop may be, it will be inferior 

 both in yield and quality to what it would have been 



NATIONAL 

 IRRIGATION 

 CONGRESS 



1909 



SPOKANE BOOSTERS.' AT ALBUQUERQUE. 



Top Row, Left to Right Arthur Hooker, Spokane; A. J. Ternent, Morrison; S. J. Harrison, Sunnyside; H. L. Moody, Spokane; W. 11. 

 Harrison, Sunnyside; W. E. Russell, Tacoma; F. A. Turner. Hoaglin; M. J. Costello, Seattle. 



Second Row C. W. Mott, Mrs. Mott, St. Paul; Dr. C. G. Fletcher, Mrs. Fletcher, North Yakima; L. G. Monroe, Spokane; C. B. Reed, 

 Wenatchee; George H. Maxwell, Chicago; Miss Kiesel, Frederick J. Kiesel, Ogden. 



In the line of municipal improvements city water 

 works have been installed, a fire department has been 

 and some are plainly wilting. Can it be possible they 

 need water again so soon? If it is this way in spring, 

 what will be the demand for water in summer ? 



But the plants seem to need water, and they really 

 do. On it goes, only to repeat the same experience in 

 a few days, when they look more thirsty than before. So 

 far I am assuming that you are irrigating where the 

 rainfall is practically nothing and irrigation a necessity. 

 But you would find the same result in those parts of 

 the semi-arid belt where the rainfall is quite important, 

 and, in a dry spell, much the same result where irriga- 

 tion is only supplimentary to a good rainfall. The land 

 seems to need water five times as .often as it would 

 need rain. Is this the wav of the boasted irrigation? 



You have simply made the regular mistake of the 

 novice. To see him perform on the desert would make 

 the angels weep. The standard trick with such is to 

 take a piece of land that for untold ages has never 

 been wet more than a few inches and is dry as an ash 



if properly treated. And if it is fruit the percentage 

 of first grade will be very low, And in the percentage 

 of first grade is where all your profit lies, the second 

 grade barely paying expenses, even when you are un- 

 wise enough to throw it on the market. Nothing else 

 can result from a constant fluctuation in the vigor of 

 any plant or tree, and if it pays at all, it proves only 

 that it would pay heavily if it had a fair chance. 



Has the reader ever seen a crop of anything grown 

 without one drop of moisture from any source touching 

 the surface after the planting of the seed ? If not, 

 can you imagine how it can be done? Will you believe 

 me when I tell you that fully 80 per cent of the enor- 

 mous fruit and grape crop of California is raised with- 

 out irrigation and gets no rain after the fruit is set? 

 Or, rather, the growers want no rain, though a little 

 may come. Can you believe that corn, potatoes and the 

 majority of garden vegetables get never a drop of 

 water after the planting of the seed ? And could you 

 believe that for nearly all of the immense bean crop 

 of the southern end, amounting to over twenty-five hun- 



