OCR Text |
Show Too Much Water Injury to Beets Early in the season when the beets are small, flooding is likely to damage dam-age them seriously, especially during ing the first and second irrigations. Professor George Stewart of the Utah Argicultural Experiment Station Sta-tion urges that considerable precaution precau-tion be taken to see that water is kept in the furrows and not allowed to come in direct contact with beets themsi lvcs. Flooding has two very dangerous effects: in the first " place, it causes the ground to bake and become so hard that the young beets are likely to be very much retarded; in the second place, flooding encourages the giowlh of weeds and also hinders cultivation due to the baking that follows. Sometimes there is a third type of injury that may result. When the sun is shining brightly on water that is in direct contact with young beets, the reflection sometimes becomes be-comes so strong that it injures the tender tissues. As soon as the beet gets older it develops a corky layer on the outside which is not injured by the reflection of the sun. Later the leaves cover the ground and prevent pre-vent the sun from striking the water directly. Not only with the sugar-beets, but with all young plants there is this danger although damage occurs only occasionally. There is no . single things about the irrigation of sugar beets that should be avoided with greater care , than flooding. Of course, the lack of enough water to keep the crop growing is more serious, seri-ous, but the flooding danger should not be lost sight of. |