THE HUNDRED PER CENT 
THE FINAL TWENTY PER CENT—SAVING AND INCREASING THE GARDEN YIELD BY THE 
OVERHEAD METHOD OF IRRIGATION — WHAT THE SYSTEM IS AND WHAT IT COSTS 
by F. F. Rockwell 
Note: Heretofore the home garden has been looked on by many people as more or less of a hobby deserving only as much attention as one usually gives to the pursuit 
of recreation. That it deserves to be taken up seriously, studied in all its details and developed to the limit of its efficiency is a new presentation of the subject. _ How to have 
the very best garden possible on a business basis is the theme of the present articles, although they are also planned to aid those who can give but limited time in the garden’s 
cultivation. They take up carefully and practically one detail after another in natural succession to the completion of the hundred per cent, garden. The first five articles 
dealt with the sowing of seeds indoors, solving the plant food problem, the planting of early and late vegetables and the care of the mature garden, appearing in the February, 
March, April, May and June issues. This is the last of the series. — EDITOR. 
S O far in this series on getting full re¬ 
turns from the garden, I have talked 
about things that were more or less familiar 
to everyone who has attempted any garden¬ 
ing. The subject which now comes up for 
discussion — irrigation — you have, of course, 
heard something about, but in all probability 
you have always associated it with the 
boundless acres of the West where some 
vast section of heretofore useless country 
has been reclaimed by a gigantic govern¬ 
mental undertaking, such as the Roosevelt 
Dam, or with the celery fields of Florida, 
or the fertile valley of the Nile. You have 
read marvelous tales of the wonderful re¬ 
sults which it has caused. It has never oc- 
cured to you that irrigation was anything 
which might double the results and lessen 
the work of your own gardening. You 
have never thought of yourself as being 
able to go out into the back yard and, 
instead of gazing up longingly and despair¬ 
ingly into the sky for a rain-cloud to save 
the perishing vegetation in your garden, being able to turn on a 
gentle rain of as many hours duration as you wished — being able 
to cover all the extent of your crops or any part of them with just 
the degree of moisture you desired for the various operations of 
the garden, such as weeding, transplanting, 
and the other activities. 
Without water the garden must be a 
failure. It does not matter how rich, how 
well prepared, how carefully tended it may 
be, if this vitally necessary element is lack¬ 
ing all plant growth gradually ceases and 
finally fails. 
While this axiomatic fact is apparent to 
everyone, very few people fully realize the 
importance of its corollary: that the re¬ 
turns from the garden, other factors being 
favorable, will depend directly upon the 
amount of water supplied, up to what the 
plants may need for maximum growth. It 
is furthermore safe to say that most small 
gardens, being placed, as they must be, in 
haphazard situations, are not favorably sit¬ 
uated to receive and retain all the water 
they could make use of to advantage, in 
one season out of ten. 
It takes about 400 pounds of water to 
supply to the growing plant enough dry 
matter to make one pound. That is an equation which should 
help to fix in your mind the necessity of having plenty of mois¬ 
ture in the soil in which you expect to grow big crops. The 
plant assimilates its food by a process entirely different from that 
The water is forced from the nozzles in a 
slender stream 
Posts of metal or wood are used at suitable intervals to support the pipes of the overhead irrigation system. The pipes themselves are fitted with 
small nozzles, from which the water is driven to a distance of twenty-five feet 
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