Irricating Vegrerasies In New York 1355 
seed in dry weather, when they transplant plants and as crops 
near maturity. It always pays to have products to market when 
the other fellow has none, and judicious application of water will 
very frequently enable a man to make his regular sales while 
his neighbors are devoting most of their time to praying for rain. 
Prices are usually highly favorable at such times. 
Viewing the case from another standpoint, we are further con- 
vinced of the value of irrigation. The vegetable man invests in 
land, in labor, in fertilizing material, and any other factors which 
make for heavy yields. It frequently happens that his return 
from these investments is jeopardized or lost through his inability 
_ to control the moisture factor. He may do much by leaving his 
* land rough through winter to prevent run-off, by harrowing fre- 
quently until planting time, by maintaining an effective mulch 
throughout the season —but even so, through sheer absence of 
moisture to be conserved, his whole crop may be lost, or so much 
of it that he might better have left the ground unplanted. 
On the other hand, irrigation is not a panacea. It does not 
relieve the grower of the necessity of good drainage and careful 
cultivation. The former is a precaution against over-watering by 
means of his artificial system or by means of heavy rains which 
may come just after a thorough irrigation. The latter saves water 
which is costly and helps to keep the soil in better physical condi- 
tion. The man who invests his money in the improvement of 
most of the growth factors and then invests more money in irri- 
gation, but who neglects a single additional factor which limits the 
crop return, is worse off than if he had never heard of irrigation. 
He loses the cost of irrigation in addition to other costs. 
Many growers can give very inspiring figures as to the results 
they have obtained by means of irrigation. A New Jersey pro- 
ducer has secured yields of as much as six hundred and twenty 
bushels of potatoes from an acre. The same planter was able to 
mature a $1,500 crop of onions from a five-acre field in time to 
permit the setting of a later crop of celery. Another grower re- 
ports that an outlay of three or four hundred dollars saved sey- 
eral thousand dollars worth of celery, whereas an unwatered acre 
and a half was a complete failure. The Ontario Agricultural 
College reports experiments with lettuce as follows: 
