| OCR Text |
Show SAVE WATER WITH THE PLOW Experiments by Bureau of Irrigation Investigations Show Value of Thorough Cultivation. Cultivation ahould follow Irrigation is aoon aa the condition of the aolt make the work possible. Uncultivated Unculti-vated land loses by evaporation two Dr three timea aa much aa cultivated land, the loaa decreasing with the depth of the aoll mulch. Th itart.lng quantities of both losses and aavlnga were demonstrated conclualvely In a leriea of experiments undertaken by the bureau of Irrigation Inveetlgatlons In an orange grove In Riverside, California. Cali-fornia. Eight water-Jacketed tanks two feet wide and four fBet deep, each filled with about eleven hundred pounds of the sandy loam that made up the orchard' or-chard' soil, were buried In a trench four feet apart after their enact weight and moisture content had been ascertained. Measured quantltlea of water were applied to the soil In the anas by meana of a furrow four inchea deep acrosa the top of each tank. In Imitation of orchard practice. prac-tice. The arrangement of the aoll layers lay-ers and the Irrigation and cultivation methods followed field conditions aa closely aa possible. In the first ei pertinent sufficient water to cover the surface of the tanka twelve Inches deep was grad-nally grad-nally applied to the eight sheet-Iron vessels. Five days after the appIW cation of the water, when the top soil bad dried out sufficiently to be worked, work-ed, four of the tanks were cultivated and four were left uncultivated. During Dur-ing the first five days of the experiment, experi-ment, before cultivation began, the evaporation losaes. determined by frequent fre-quent weighing of the tanks, amounted amount-ed to fifteen per cent of the total quantity of water added to both aets of tanks. Prom the sixth to the eleventh day the value of cultivation as a moisture-saver became apparent. On the ninth day, for Instance, the cultivated tanka showed an average loss rf water amounting to leas than a pound and a quarter each, whereas .the aoll left uncultivated lost three pounds per tank. After the last weighing weigh-ing on the eleventh day It was found that, since cultivation began, four of the tanka had lost 6.7 per cent of the total amount of water applied. In the weighing of the four uncultivated tanka the toss of water waa found to reach 11.3 per cent |
