68 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
irrigation valve that is being made at 
Orlando that can be sold for $2.00 or less. 
This valve is connected to a sewer pipe 
main and can be placed 6 to 8 inches be¬ 
neath the surface of the ground, so that 
cultivation can go on with no impedi¬ 
ment in the grove. This buried valve or 
cap, also is safe from being knocked off 
by teams, etc., which so often causes so 
much trouble. I would also like to state 
for the benefit of growers in the hillier 
country that we have experimented with 
drain tile or sewer pipe that has been re¬ 
inforced with wire and concrete so as to 
stand relatively high pressures. This 
pipe being laid continuously in the trench, 
such pipe is much cheaper than iron pipe 
and will stand very high pressure if suffi¬ 
ciently re-inforced. 
Irrigation of muck land adjacent to or 
within the glades can be accomplished by 
the methods described above for groves, 
and can also be used to irrigate many 
truck crops, but generally speaking the ir¬ 
rigation of this class of lands can be done 
by simply installing a pump of large ca¬ 
pacity and raising the water table. As 
most of you know muck lands sometimes 
become very dry when well drained, and 
truck crops often suffer severely, but if the 
water table can be raised sufficiently irri¬ 
gation is accomplished satisfactorily. In 
the future it may be possible to raise the 
water table on a large section of the 
glades by holding the water up in the main 
canals by means of locks or dams, but un¬ 
til the drainage plans are further advanced 
it probably will not be safe to try out this 
plan on a large scale on account of danger 
from flooding by heavy rains. In the 
meantime thousands of acres may be in 
need of water. It is probable that large 
capacity pumping plants will be used to 
supply this want. Many acres somewhat 
similar to the glades, have been irrigated 
in California by running water in ditches 
spaced from 20 to 40 feet apart, and hold¬ 
ing the water in until the intervening 
land is irrigated. This same method is 
used in the large Hastings potato district 
of this state, but in this case a hard pan 
prevents the waste of water. Still the 
water plane can often be raised without 
an impervious substratum if enough water 
is pumped. And enormous amounts of 
water can be pumped through lifts of 4 or 
5 feet with comparatively small engines. 
Several hundreds of acres of truck- 
crops have been irrigated near Ft. Lau¬ 
derdale on the sandy lands, by running 
water between the rows of the plants us¬ 
ing open ditches for mains. In most of 
these cases large heads of water have been 
pumped from the drainage canals by home 
made pumps. Most of these pumps con¬ 
sist of a square wooden box set on an in¬ 
cline, one end in the canal and the other 
end upon the bank. Water is forced 
through this flume by a swiftly revolving 
boat propeller placed in a short piece of 
pipe in the end of the flume that sets in 
the water. An ordinary marine engine 
is used to operate the propeller, the en¬ 
gine being perched on the dry end of the 
wooden box. Some of these pumps deliv¬ 
er as much as 2,000 gallons per minute, 
and will irrigate large tracts of land, even 
though a high per cent of the water is lost 
in transit through open ditches. Yet the 
low lift and large quantities of water 
available makes the system very satisfac¬ 
tory. Such an outfit costs a few dollars 
