



IRRIGATION IN CONNECTICUT. 2 2, 
and at the ripening season of strawberries usually means a 
good crop, while a ten days’ drouth at this time will often 
reduce the crop one-third to one-half below a normal yield. 
Nearly every farmer knows that plenty of rainfall when pota- 
toes are “‘setting’’ is favorable to a large crop, while drouth 
at this time is almost sure to seriously diminish the yield. 
Short periods of drouth will often so check plant growth that 
even if these periods be followed by copious rainfalls the crop 
does not fully recover itself. This is especially true with erass. 
A short hay crop is almost certain to result if the rainfall is 
small during the month of May. 
NEED OF IRRIGATION IN CONNECTICUT. : 
The majority of people fail to realize that irrigation has any 
place in New England agriculture. It is generally thought 
that our annual rainfall is sufficient to meet the needs of most, 
if not all, of our farm crops, and that any considerable 
expenditure of money for irrigation would not repay the 
expense, unless in very exceptional cases. The rainfall, how- 
ever, is very unevenly distributed throughout the year. Short, 
severe drouths are a characteristic of this climate. A high 
temperature, accompanied by drying winds, will, in a week’s 
time, frequently cause our crops to wilt, and in less than two 
weeks the crop prospects may be nearly ruined as a result 
of the absence of the water needed to keep up a vigorous 
growth. 
A rainfall of three inches per month, if fairly well distributed 
throughout the month, will probably produce an average 
growth of most farm crops. With less than this amount of 
rainfall many crops fail to make a nermal development. Dur- 
ing the past eight years the Storrs Experiment Station has 
made observations on rainfall during the growing-season in 
about a dozen different places in the State, and from these and 
others made for the New England Meteorological Society are 
taken the following figures for the rainfall for the three sum- 
mer months. From this table it will be seen that the rainfall 
has been below three inches for June, seven years out of eight; 
for July, three years; and for August, one year. 
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