PRODUCTIOlsr OF TULIP BULBS. 35 



DRAINAGE. 



Wliether the producer of tulip bulbs will be obliged to give serious 

 thought to drainage will depend entirely upon his location. Even 

 with the heavy precipitation of the Puget Sound region, level culture 

 can be practiced on all the Lynden sandy loams except where they 

 lie low and their water table is naturally high. On the Whatcom 

 silt loams, however, the case is very different. Here careful ditching 

 is required. Although the present location of the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry plats is rolling and in the main contains sufficient fall, it is 

 found necessary to maintain ditches down to the clay subsoil along 

 the sides of each plat. Ditches have been dug on both sides of 

 the roadways, and roadways around each two plats have a ditch 

 between. This system seems to be necessary even though the plats 

 run across a well-drained slope, i. e., when the drainage is good in the 

 direction of the length of the bulb beds. Were it not for these ditches 

 to intercept and carry off the drainage waters, the lower plats, even 

 on hillsides no longer than the width of two plats (100 feet), would 

 be too wet in the winter and during the growing season until May. 



In shaping up the ground preparatory to planting, care is also 

 exercised to contour the plats so as to get a gradual fall from the 

 centers to the ditch on either side. The greater part of this is 

 accomplished by plowing toward the center of the bed. 



Even with beds only 40 to 50 feet long and the plats bedded up in 

 the center, it is found that the conditions for growth on the ends of 

 the beds are far from perfect for two reasons: (1) There is an accumu- 

 lation of moisture to a detrimental degree in the first 4 to 6 feet 

 along the ends of the beds, although the drainage slope is not over 

 25 feet in length; (2) owing to the building up of the center of the 

 bed on soils which are so shallow, the ends of the beds are too close 

 to the subsoil and have too much refractory clay in their make-up to 

 let go of the surplus moisture as rapidly as desirable. The result 

 is that the soil at the ends of the beds is likely to be hard and difficult 

 to dig and the crop commonly much poorer than in the center. In 

 extreme cases the bulbs so located rot, and nothing but old coats is 

 to be found at digging time. 



It will be readily appreciated that the contouring and ditch main- 

 tenance are expenses which are, of course, not necessary on well- 

 drained lands. 



WHERE TULIPS MAYBE GROWN. 



That tulips are an exacting crop, as commonly supposed, must be 

 most emphatically denied. There are certain requirements for their 

 best culture, it is true, but these requirements can be satisfied over 

 a comparatively large extent of territory. 



Wherever soils are suitable, the Puget Sound territory is admirably 

 adapted, as, indeed, is the whole Pacific coast from northwestern 



