Norwich bulletin., 1914-08-08

, orchards, so as to get the oil to the right spot.
 When it comes to irrigation, the Col 1 prada photograph shows an orchard l of young trees each set in saucer like depression extending out from the l trunk at least as far as the branches hang over and capable of holding az i good many barrels of water. Each I saucer is shown filled and being kept 1 full from a central ditch running down 1 between the rows and fed from the | main head ditch at the upper side Of 1 the field.
 | In other words, every single little /! tree is given, every so often, a soak 1 ing with barrels and barrels and hogs l heads and hogsheads of water, 1 whole trout brook being turned into 1 the depression about each one till it IS filled and sufficient run being then continued to keep it full for twelve or twenty-four hours, while the balance ] of the brook goes on to soak another | and another, and so on till it's entire i volume#is absorbed
 People in the east who think of ir-
 rigation as matter of lawn -sprink- i Iers and inch hose and watering-p pots | don't even know what real Irrigation l means. The little spattering they do i bears about as close relation to prac-
 tical irrigation as shower-bath does to Niagara Falls.
 One dry summer not long ago, had 1 a patch of celery which was in sore need of water It happened to lie near l the house and within sight of the kit ! chen pump. Also. I happened to have i a few lengths of pipe, lying around. So l got out the pipe. rigged it on to the pump nozzle carried 1t out through the window and to the celery patch. 1 There I led it into an old shoe pack ing-case, to prevent the jet from bor- ing a hole into the soil and also to i aid in distributing the water over all i area at least the size of the box bot | tom. ] had already measured the out flow of my pump,-so many full strokes to the gallon, you know,-and 1 1 proceeded to pump five barrels of l water into that shoe box lying md ! way between two rows of celery. i Then I wiped the sweat off and went 1 out to see how much of pond I had i started. When I reached the box the 1 water had all drained out of it, and | there wasn't a sign of wetness in the
 dirt outside Lifting it. I found that the ground under it was moist. not really wet; not anything that could be
 called muddy, just moist. I placed the l box at right angles and set it across | instead of lengthwise of the rows, 1 touching the former moist spot so as l to make sort of letter T. Then 1 went back and pumped five barrels
 more into it. Same result Ground
 underneath nloistened but not water l enough to satisfy the little area and l leave any to seep outside.
 A, little figuring of the relation
 which my shoe-box watered area bore to the whole celery patch showed me
 that one man with pump and an inch < pipe couldn't cover the whole patch in
 less than a week of steady pumping.
 So l stopped, then and there, and de- inn nd fn toI, ay,6 ten barrels of water had on the eel
 cry rows where they were applied Neither the next day nor the next 1 week, not at any time till the end of
 the season was there the slightest diff l ference between the celery where I had put on ten barrels of water and that
 which hadn't had a drop. The entire
 patch was a failure, and the watered
 fraction as worthless as the rest The
 soil is sandy loam, and I suspect
 that the water l pumped on simply
 went straight down to the water -tab. e
 Which, the drought being a severe and
 long g-continued one, might have been
 ten or twelve feet below the surfa e.
 It was evident that the only effectiI e
 form of irrigation for that celery would
 have been to have had the rows in
 furTows instead of ridges. and to have Il turned a brook into each furroW and
 kept it soaking full for twenty-four
 hours every week or so.
 uoil happen 10 nave a brook which l can use that way
 Yet, every year when we have A
 drought, I am kindly advised by gen. I tlemen who know nothing more of tr-
 rigation than the fairy stories they
 have read in the magazines, to pipe
 some water off the hills and irrigate my gardens. Why, Great Caesar in
 such drought as we had last summer.
 there isn't water enough in all the
 brooks within a mile of me on every side, to have really irrigated my corn
 and ca5bages, alone, if I could have had the whole of it every day and all day!
 , Every year when a late spring or early fall frost comes along. these same wiseacres wonder why I don't
 get some f1re-Dots and fight off frosts "as they do out west
 They might just as sensibly ask me ! why don't dig diamonds instead of
 tubers out of my potato patch; or why I'm not eleven feet tall.
 . 1here iofS oT