52 The Fruit-Growers Guide-Book 



Water as an Aid 



Water has often been used as a means of preventing 

 frost to plants, through the large amount of heat which 

 can be stored up in it to be liberated more slowly in the 

 field. In the irrigated sections of the West this method 

 has been used to a large extent in some districts, although 

 with but little real success. Spraying the plants with a 

 continuous spray of water, however, has proven to be 

 satisfactory, although finding little application just yet out- 

 side of the garden. That this system can be used to ad- 

 vantage though, is very evident in some sections of the 

 South where truck patches and orange groves are provided 

 with an overhead irrigation system, in which the water is 

 carried at a high pressure and is applied through spray 

 nozzles located at intervals of a few feet throughout the 

 length of the pipe. Celery has been saved in this manner 

 when the temperature reached as low as 12 degrees. Where 

 a grower is equipped with such a watering system it is a 

 comparative!}^ simple matter to provide a heating device 

 where the water can be heated as it is run through the 

 pipes and plants be safely carried through a very hard 

 freeze with entire safety. 



Irrigation, either in ditches or overhead, cannot be re- 

 t lied on at all times as providing against low temperatures, 

 and either system has many disadvantages. But horticul- 

 turists have another means of providing against frost dam- 

 age by means of heating the air in the orchard or garden 

 by means of numerous small fires. In the commercial 

 orchards this method is the result of modern ingenuity 

 striving to overcome some of the enormous losses which 

 fruit growers have met with through the damage wrought 

 by late frosts in spring. 



Development of Modern Frost Fighting 



In the Yearbook of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture for 1909 Prof. G. B. Brackett, in an article on 

 "Prevention of Frost Injury to Fruit Crops," briefly traces 

 the development of means of fighting frosts. One of the 



