Page 22 



BETTER FRUIT 



April 



Jonathan 



Spitz 



Wlnesap PeacK 



SpiU 



Spitz 



Spill 



Spitz 



JonaUian Jonathan 



Figure 7— PLAN OF PLANTING APPLE TREES WITH PEACH TREES AS FILLERS 

 A. Trees as planted at first; B, Peach trees removed; C, Winesap removed. 



rod, or three inches to one hundred feet. 

 Such a ditch may be built by first plow- 

 ing four furrows and then removing the 

 loose earth either with shovels or a nar- 

 row scraper. The loose earth may like- 

 wise be thrown up on the sides and top 

 by means of the home-made implement 

 shown in Figure 8. Canvas dams, metal 

 tappoons or other similar devices are 

 inserted in the head ditch to raise the 

 surface of the water opposite that part 

 of the orchard where furrows have been 

 made, and which is about to be watered. 

 The chief difficulty in this mode of fur- 

 row irrigation arises in withdrawing 

 water from the ditch and in distributing 

 it equally among a large number of fur- 

 rows. A skilled irrigator may adjust the 

 size and depth of the ditch bank open- 

 ings so as to secure a somewhat uniform 

 flow in the furrows, but constant atten- 

 tion is required in order to maintain it. 

 If the water is permitted to flow for a 

 short time unattended the distribution 

 is likely to become unequal. Parts of the 

 ditch bank become soft, and, as the water 

 rushes through, the earth is washed 

 away, permitting larger discharges and 

 lowering the general level of the water 

 in the ditch so that other openings may 

 have no discharge. Some of the orchard- 

 ists of San Diego, California, insert in 

 niches cut in the bank pieces of old grain 

 sacks or tent cloth. The water flows 

 over these without eroding the earth. 

 Another device is to use a board pointed 

 at the lower end and containing a nar- 

 row opening or slot, through which the 

 water passes to the furrow. Shingles are 

 also used to regulate the flow in the fur- 

 rows. The thin ends of these are stuck 

 into the ground at the heads of furrows. 



In recent years short tubes or spouts 

 have been used in many of the head 

 ditches of orchards to divert small quan- 

 tities of water to furrows. These tubes 

 are usually made of wood, but pipes 

 made of clay, black iron, galvanized iron 

 and tin are occasionally used. 



For nurseries, and young trees espe- 

 cially, and also for mature trees, a cheap 

 and serviceable tube may be made from 

 pine lath, such as are used for plastering. 

 The four-foot lengths are cut into two 

 equal parts and four of these pieces are 

 nailed together to form a tube. One of 

 these tubes, when placed with its center 

 two inches below the surface of the 

 water in the head ditch, discharges nearly 

 three-quarters of a miner's inch of water. 



— 22 fx,. 



Figure 0— LIEXAGONAL METHOD OF SETTING 

 OUT ORCHARD TREES 



and if placed four inches below the sur- 

 face will discharge more than one miner's 

 inch. In Southern Idaho the lumber 

 mills manufacture a special lath for this 

 purpose. It is one-half inch thick, two 

 inches wide and thirty-six inches long. 

 If such tubes, when thoroughly dry, are 

 dipped in hot asphalt they will last a 

 much longer time. In some of the decid- 

 uous orchards of California a still larger 

 wooden tube or box is used. Figure 9 

 represents one of these. It is made of 

 four pieces of three-quarter by three and 

 three-quarter inch redwood boards of the 

 desired length. The flow through this 

 tube is regulated by a cheap gate, con- 

 sisting of a piece of galvanized iron fast- 

 ened by means of a leather washer and 

 a wire nail. 



The orchardist who lives near a manu- 

 facturing town or city can often purchase 

 at a low figure pieces of worn-out and 

 discarded piping, varying from three- 

 quarters to two inches in diameter. Such 

 pipes, when cut into suitable lengths, 

 make a good substitute for wooden 

 spouts. . Tin tubes one-half inch in diam- 

 eter and of the proper length have been 

 used with good success. In compact 

 soils, through which water passes very 

 slowly, furrows must be near together, 

 and under such conditions small tin 

 tubes are to be preferred. 



In making use of tubes of various 

 kinds to distribute water to furrows it is 

 necessary to maintain a constant head 

 in the supply ditch. This is done by 

 inserting checks at regular distances. 

 These distances vary with the grade of 

 the ditch, but 150 feet is not far from 

 being an average spacing. In temporary 

 ditches the canvas dam is perhaps the 

 best check, but in permanent ditches it 

 pays to use wood or concrete. An 

 effective wooden check is shown in Fig- 

 ure 10. In this the opening is controlled 

 by a flashboard, which may be adjusted 

 so as to hold the water at any desired 

 height and at the same time permit the 

 surplus to flow over the top to feed the 

 next lower set of furrows. 



Formerly head flumes for orchards 

 were built of wood, but the steady 

 increase in the price of lumber and the 

 decrease in the price of Portland cement 

 have induced many fruit growers to use 

 cement instead. When built of wood the 

 length of the sections varies from twelve 

 to twenty feet, sixteen feet being the 

 most common. The bottom width runs 

 from six to twelve inches, while the 

 depth is usually one to two inches less. 



Redwood lumber one and one-quarter 

 inches thick is perhaps the best for the 

 bottom and sides, and joists of two by 

 four-inch pine or fir are commonly used 

 for yokes, which are spaced four feet 

 centers. Midway between the yokes 

 auger holes are bored, and the flow 

 through these openings is controlled in 

 the manner shown in Figures 11 and 12. 

 A two-inch fall for each hundred feet 

 may be regarded as a suitable grade for 

 head flumes, but it often happens that 

 the slope of the land is much greater 

 than this, in which case low checks are 

 placed in the bottom of the flume at each 

 opening, as shown in Figure -12. 



A head flume composed of cement, 

 sand and gravel costs, as a rule, about 

 twice as much as a wooden flume of the 

 same capacity, but the early decay of 

 wood, especially if it comes in contact 

 with earth, makes the cement flume 

 cheaper in the end. By means of a spe- 

 cially designed machine, which is pat- 

 ented, cement mortar, composed of one 

 part cement to about six parts of coarse 

 sand, is fed into a hopper and forced by 

 lever pressure into a set of guide plates 

 of the form of the flume. Such flumes 

 are made in place in one continuous line 

 across the upper margin of the orchard 

 tract. After the flume is built, and before 

 the mortar becomes hard, small tubes 

 from three-quarters to one and one-half 

 inches in diameter, the size depending 

 somewhat on the size of the flume, are 

 inserted in the side next the orchard. 

 The flow through these tubes is regu- 

 lated by zinc slides, shown in Figure 13. 

 Flumes of this kind are made in five 

 sizes, the smallest being six inches on 

 the bottom in the clear and the largest 

 fourteen inches. 



At a slightly greater cost a stronger 

 fiume can be built by the use of molds. 

 The increased strength is derived from 

 a change in the mixture. In the machine- 

 made flume the mixture of one part 

 cement to five or six parts of sand is 

 lacking in strength, for the reason that 

 there is not enough cement to fill all the 

 open spaces in the sand. In using molds 

 medium sized gravel can be added to the 

 sand, and the mixture resembles that of 

 the common rich concrete. Such flumes 

 can be built of almost any size from a 

 bottom width of ten inches to one of 

 forty inches, and from a depth of eight 

 inches to one of twenty-four inches, but 

 when the section is increased beyond 

 about 240 square inches it pays better to 

 slope the sides outward and adopt the 



