TWENTY -EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



51 



sprinkled on a dry subsoil. Mine were planted in ground that had been 

 gridironed with small streams for weeks. They were then left three 

 weeks without water to force them to deep rooting. They were then 

 watered once in two weeks with a deep furrow two feet or more away. 

 At the last irrigation the water was allowed to run twenty-four hours, 

 the weather being the most intense and continuous hot spell of the 

 summer. In less than a week hundreds of melons were cracking open, 

 and in another week hundreds more were decaying from the inside. 



I found it much the same with other things ; but too strong conclusions 

 must not be drawn from such instances. There are some subsoils that 

 will not reservoir moisture well enough, and there are trees and plants 

 that are tremendous evaporators of water through the leaves in hot 

 weather. But the principle holds wherever it can be applied, and 

 thorough soaking for many feet before anything is planted will greatly 

 reduce the amount of water needed afterward. If it brings up alkali, 

 the sooner it comes the better, for it would come in time if you wet the 

 ground enough for good success. This may be very important where 

 your summer water is very cold. By filling the ground when the ground 

 itself is cold and nothing growing you do no harm. But by waiting 

 until things are ready to grow and then applying cold water too often 

 the ground does not recover enough from the chill. In the mountains 

 it is a common sight to see corn thus ruined. I have seen it so kept 

 back with mountain spring water that it never tasseled, although having 

 plenty of warm weather and planted early enough. 



The use of deep furrows made with a subsoil plow is a great help in 

 increasing the duty of water, but this is not subirrigation proper. In 

 subirrigation the water is all delivered below from openings in pipes. 

 Without a very expensive plant these openings will be so far apart that 

 you never can be certain of wetting all the ground, or of wetting any of 

 it evenly. The movement of water underground, even in gravel, is very 

 irregular and can not be ascertained by tests in boxes or anything of 

 the sort. Unless the wetting is uniform you have limited irrigation, 

 too much like irrigation with small basins around the tree or with one 

 furrow to a tree. If you can do no better, this may do better than 

 nothing. But it is generally better to go where you can get plenty of 

 water, for you will rarely get water to do full duty when limited to only 

 a part of the soil. 



PRESIDENT COOPER. The essays that you have just heard read are 

 now before the Convention for discussion. 



