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a-s it has the entire winter to soak away and leave the soil in fine 

 condition for the tree to put forth the necessary growth early 

 the next season. My practice of preparing land for irrigation 

 is to plough a deep furrow for the water. I favour this plan 

 in order to prevent flooding the land. I want to keep my surface 

 as dry as possible, in order that I may get on to the land more 

 quickly with horses to cultivate it, as this is the method by which 

 we retain the moisture in the ground. If the furrows are al- 

 lowed to remain uncultivated any length of time, they will crack 

 open, then I think irrigation will have done more harm than good. 

 This has been one of the reasons that we over-irrigated in years 

 past. We irrigated through furrows, and in cultivating did not 

 entirely fill them. In a few days they would crack open, and the 

 hot sun and wind would soon dry out the surface, so that we 

 would be compelled to apply the water soon again, therefore get- 

 ting our land soggy and sour by too much water. Irrigate 

 sparingly. Keep the water from the surface, and feed the sur- 

 face roots by cultivation from moisture below. This might be 

 called sub-irrigation. This rule holds good for general agricul- 

 ture, as thorough cultivation is beneficial to all plant life. If 

 fresh air is beneficial to human life, so it also is to plant life, 

 and this pure air cannot be injected into the soil if flooding is 

 practised. I am satisfied after several years of experience in 

 Colorado that surface cultivation is one of the cheapest and 

 most effective methods of checking excessive evaporation. This 

 fact does not appear to be well understood in this State, and many 

 of our irrigators have an important lesson yet to learn in this 

 regard. Irrigating water can never take the place of cultivation,. 

 As we all well know, the custom of many irrigators is to apply 

 large quantities of water to growing crops, arid the water makes 

 a paste of the top soil. In less than thirty-six hours the moisture 

 in this top layer may be evaporated, leaving it hard and baked. 

 Under such conditions it is astonishing how rapidly the soil 

 moisture is converted into vapour. It is as if millions of tiny 

 tubes extended through this top crust to suck up the moisture 

 contained in both the soil and sub-soil. If this process is long 

 continued, there will be found little moisture within a foot of the 

 surface. 



In the general system of orchard cultivation in California, 

 two evils are to be guarded against, too early ploughing of the 

 land before there is sufficient growth of weeds, or early culti- 

 vation to keep down weeds, and a system of irrigating which 

 keeps the land soggy at one time and with a hard crust on the 

 surface at another. 



Late, second ploughing is also to be discountenanced, one 

 good ploughing in early spring, followed by the disc or the tooth- 

 harrow, being better suited to aid conservation of moisture, as 

 well as the constant adding to the land of humus and nitrogen." 



