Modern Irrigation for the Lawn and Garden 
SOME RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS IN SCIENTIFIC IRRIGATION 
METHODS AND MACHINERY FOR THE PRIVATE GARDEN 
by F. F. Rockwell 
W HETHER for the hundred-acre truck farm or the hun¬ 
dred-foot back yard, water is the most important and the 
most neglected factor in gardening. Good seed, good soil, good 
culture, good fertilization and good intentions all decrease to the 
vanishing point as the 
amount of moisture in 
the soil becomes ex¬ 
hausted. In most sec¬ 
tions of the country we 
seldom have a season 
dry enough to kill 
crops outright, if the 
soil has been well pre¬ 
pared and careful 
methods of cultivation 
have been used. But it 
is also very seldom that 
we have enough rain¬ 
fall, as Nature dis¬ 
tributes it, to make 
possible the production 
of full crops, even with 
careful, intelligent cul¬ 
ture. The loss in the garden's products from ordinary “dry 
weather” in an average year is often from a fourth to a half, or 
even more, of what the same seed, soil and culture, plus abundant 
moisture in the soil, would have produced. If this loss was caused 
by insects or plant disease, which you could see actually at work, 
you would not for a moment let it continue without trying every 
available means of overcoming it. But season after season the 
insidious effects of dry weather do the same amount of injury in 
a less perceptible way, and you let it pass as the season’s “luck.’’ 
I have tried most of the systems of applying water that are 
available for general use: in open ditches, with hose, by coarse 
and fine sprays, and with various sorts of sprinklers. The objec¬ 
tions to surface irrigation are that the ground must be graded and 
comparatively level, space is wasted, a great deal of labor is in¬ 
volved in applying the water, and it is applied unevenly and in 
such quantities that a mud-crust is formed which must either be 
broken up or covered up by cultivation immediately afterward. 
Using the hose is a great inconvenience, takes a great amount of 
time, and the soil is spattered about on foliage and fruit. Sprink¬ 
lers apply the water un¬ 
evenly, and either have 
to be changed about 
frequently or so many 
of them used that the 
cost is practically pro¬ 
hibitive. 
Three years ago I 
came across a system 
of irrigation that 
worked on a new prin¬ 
ciple, which may be de¬ 
scribed as the overhead 
nozzle-line system. I 
tried this system out 
with such satisfactory 
results that last year 
we used it over some 
five acres of potatoes 
and garden crops, and this year we shall use it over all the vege¬ 
tables we grow. It is equally valuable for the flower, lawn or 
small fruit garden. 
This system is very simple and very easy to put in. The water 
must be under a pressure of fifteen to twenty pounds; twenty-five 
to forty is desirable. With this one provision the system may be 
put in anywhere, on any kind of soil, and whether the garden is 
level or uneven or sloping. It gives an absolutely even distribu¬ 
tion of the water. The soil is neither spattered about nor made 
wet and muddy, so that it cakes afterward. In the second place, 
the water is under control, and as much or as little can be applied 
as is wanted and where it is wanted. The application of the water 
is practically automatic; all the work required is to turn on the 
valve, and occasionally during the watering — at intervals of fifteen 
minutes to an hour — to revolve the nozzle-line through a few 
By this system the water is not applied directly to the soil, but thrown into the air in a long line of 
small streams in the form of a fine, gentle spray 
In the garden the pipes are hidden behind foliage which, however, does not interfere By running the pipe down the center of the garden both sides are reached, the 
with the spread of the stream mechanism being adjusted without labor 
15 
