Show distribution OF irrigation WATER by L M WINSOR utah agricultural college oregon short line railroad demonstration train lecture according to many historians irrigation la Is one ot of tho the oldest applied arts one writer even claims that it Is made a distinctive feature ot of the tha middle status of at barbarism ancient egypt became tho the granary of the horld as a result of natural irrigation through the overflowing of tate nile through irrigation chaldea assyria and ad Baby babelonia Babylon lonia la located as they were in a practically country along the valley of the tigris and euph rates rose to enviable prominence and dominion the chinese the romans and the moors moore all made use of irrigation L on in this ahja country we lid evidence of it as practiced by the ancient inhabitants of this continent and later in the gardens ot of the old mission fathers of southern california numerous other examples to prove the importance of irrigation as a factor in na tion building might be ba cited but to tho the anglo saxon race the art had its birth but little more than halt half a century ago this seems doubly strange strang 0 when wo we look into history and find that at this time over acres of land had been reclaimed by irrigation in different parts of the world perhaps this can be explained on the theory that the derm germanic anle peoples have always written history much taster faster than they have read it however this may be the first attempt by the anglo saxons to reclaim the arid wastes of land was made in the summer of 1817 in the salt lake valley by a letle alband band of mormon pioneers to them we owe tho the birth of the modern art of irrigation and the working out of the co operative system as 0 have it in practice today the irrigation contagion cont agon soon spread and became not only the governing factor in the et establishing of 0 mormon towns but in the colonizing of the entire arid west irrigation as aa an art falls into two divisions C lot irrigation as a primary at and 2nd and irrigation as a secondary art by the first we mean the using ot of firl litigation gation to take the place of cultivation fertilization anis and so on a and nd by tho the second we mean the using ot 1 tr gatlon rl water merely to auppl supplement ment i the ater la Is tho correct use of irrigation if a farmer uses dry farm methods mon along 19 with his practice ot of irrigation hei he cannot go far wrong j one of the grave mistakes made by our early irrigators Irrl gators was the indiscriminate use of water with the result that thousands of deres acres of once productive land have been rendered into veritable swamps and alkali beds tho the lamentable feature of this question la Is the tact fact that with our sixty odd years of experience some of our farmers are still following these erroneous methods and are ruining not only their own farms but those of their unfortunate neighbors by a too liberal and careless application of at water this to la especially true la ill some of the newer sections where a more or less heavy application la Is needed for the first few years the trouble is that they do not set the brakes until it ts Is too late once onca a new soil has been moistened below the range of the plant roots it needs agrest deal less water than it required to begin with the actual amount tor for the ma turing of any pertain crop will vary only with the seasons cultivation and so on being the same this being the case and it Is possible to make an economical am cal distribution of the water at one ones I 1 a disposal and use it in a way which will not be detrimental to the eoll 11 and in a way to result in the greatest returns to those concerned this question Is one of prime importance to the farmers in this arid region and too much stress cannot bo be laid upon it situated as aa we are in a section where the rain and snowfall snow fall Is very low we wa are dependent almost ano eulily upon irrigation water to increase our agricultural possibilities tho the farming lands landa are almost unlimited within the borders bordere of our states but chere here Is a decided limit to the water supply the question then Is not how much land have we but how much water have we at our disposal the state of utah represents an area of over square miles ot at which only 1790 1700 square miles are cultivated and less than 1000 square miles or slightly under per cent ot at the total are ara actually irrigated idaho la is in a bi i rollar rallar condition what we need then most moat ot of all is a distribution of tho the water in such a way that the greatest possible re turns turna can be obtained the problem is not difficult of 0 solution it we only apply ourselves to a study of conditions as we find them and to the information available in the short time at my disposal I 1 hope to open up 0 una line ot at thought which will help some of you in your work vork tor for after all each of your individual problems pro blema must be solved by yourselves the amount of plant growth la Is dependent in a decided measure upon the amount of moisture within certain limits in the soil the supplying plying and maintaining of this moisture in an amount which will bring the greatest return Is then them our problem the water found in soils la Is of bf three kinds lat free water or the gatei round between the soil particles of a 8 maturated atu rated soil 2nd and capillary water or that which Is held in a thin film around ea each cliot ot the soli particles of a moist but not saturated soil this is the water used by the plant la in its growth dad 3rd hygroscopic water which its is the water held by the soli sell but which in all probability la Is not used by the plant only aqueous or water plants can grow in a soil containing free water hence our problem Is confined to 10 the regulation of the capillary water only and to the conditions which govern plant growth there are three ways by which soil moisture can escape lat dy by sinking into deep soils out of reach of the plant roots ana escaping by under drainage 2nd and by evaporating from the surface 3rd ard by passing through the plant it self itself la in a process known as transpiration pi ration each of these losses can be governed to a certain extent the first by making biking lighter applications of 0 water at each irrigation the second or surface evaporation can be checked ba b y cultivating the surface sufficient to form a dust thus closing up the opening at 0 the capillary abes which forza form when the surface soil begins to dry out and the third or transpiration can be checked by the addition of soil fertility or by ordinary cultivation thus the last two cart can bo be governed by the simple opera tion of stirring tho the surface after an irrigation the thought is prevalent among farmers that a certain amount ot of water must be used by a plant in order to produce product a certain weight of dry matter As early as 1699 woodward Wp odward found that it required less water to produce is pound of dry matter in a plant growing glowing in a rich soil where the plant food was evenly balanced than in one of opposite nature later in 1878 a german investigator found that the yield of dry matter was greatest where transpiration was least ile he also found that the enriching of the soll soil enabled the plant to produce dry matter with less water now the question may arise in your minds why should cultivation decrease crease the amount of water actually used bi by the plant cultivation ion permits the air and sunshine to enter tho the soil more readily causing a consequent liberation of 0 plant food which Is 8 equivalent in effect to the addition of tho the food artificially that cultivation actually decreases the amount of water used by the plant Is shown in the results of experiments peri ments conducted at the utah experiment peri ment station inthe vegetation house certain tanks were planted to corn an equal number of 0 tanks containing the some same kinds of soil were left bare bara for a check on the evaporation from the surface su rEace forty eight hours after each irrigation and then ever every y week half the surfaces were cultivated while the other halt half were left bare table no 1 shows the results TABLE NO 1 cultivation vs transpiration aver age for three years pounds water kinds of oc I 1 cultivation used by want plant soil to produce I 1 lb dry ani ue 74 hours after college irrigate irrigation I 1 oil loam learn then none COS 48 hours after sample irrigation clay then weekly none 18 hours hour after f irrigation clay lay then weekly none nona As the soil eoll in each set of tanks was alike and as all other conditions except x the cultivation were identical it necessarily follows that the reduced amount of water required to produces produce a pound of dry matter in the cultivated pot was due to the cultivation aud and its effects there Is then a double reason for cultivating your crops you not only hold the moisture in the soil by pro preventing evaporation from its surface but you make it possible for the moisture retained to produce in some instances more than twice as much plant growth this means that by the practice ot of cultivation you can mako make your irrigation water cover just twice as much ground there Is a marked variation in the amounts of water required for different varieties of plants for example all other conditions being eq equal u of the potato plant requires more than two and one half times the water to to produce a pound of dry matter that the corn plant requires to be ba continued |