Show IRRIGATE BEETS EA EARLY by george stewart utah experiment station lt it Is frequently profitable to irrigate sugar bugar beets much earlier than Is I 1 usually done it la Is often necca sao to IrTI irrigate gate them while the land la Is still rather moist underneath this Is be cause of 0 the grounds drying out at the surface lor for two or three inches in depth before the beets have grown to sufficient fent size to penetrate into the deep soil when this takes place a there Is a layer on top that Is co completely devoid of soil moisture and which would not be ba troublesome it the beets reached well below it unfortunately it happens too often that this drying takes place before the beets have grown beyond the dried area when this condition does arise it Is necessary necea sary to irrigate the surface in order to wet it sufficiently to per alt the beets to continue growing usually only one such irrigation Is necessary ec essary because before the time for a second application has come around the beet roots have gone down some distance into the damp soil this first irrigation should riot not be ba a heavy beavy application only enough water Is necessary to thoroughly moisten the dry surface it la Is sometimes advocated that only each alternate space have a tur fur row in it it has been found better at the experiment station however to make rather small furrows and place these close to the sugar beets on one side of the space rather than trying to irrigate in the when the furrow Is made in the middle middie of the space between two rows row rather heavy applications aren eles sary in order to cause the water to soak over to the beets there Is an old idea prevalent in much of the state which says that crops should not be irrigated until it is absolutely necessary this how ever Is not true on account of the th tact fact that the plants wilt very easily and begin to suffer at once tor for water there has been nothing by way of irrigation that has been so harmful as delaying the first application until the crops suffer seriously many ot of the beets die from lack of 0 mol moisture sture and many others are so weakened that disease are able to take hold ot of them one of the most noticeable things thing about our experimental work on beets bus been that beets properly manur manor ed and properly irrigated are injured by disease to only a very slight extent whereas beets that lack both bobb fertility and moisture are sometimes sometime attacked to an extent of practically per cent la in 1919 when there was such a general attack of rhoma root rot it was observed that on poor land and on late beets the injury was about twice as great and in some cases five times as great as on land that had been properly cared for in these two respects people who visited the experiment farm in logan were without exception struck by the great rost istance to disease ot at beets that had been and lr ir ri gated in III this connection it Is also wis dom to see that seedbeds are proper ly packed of the fact that a loose ioos surface permits lack of soil moisture by evaporation this creates the tha same condition that delayed irrigation would bring about very loose see seed d beds and rather steep slopes are much more likely to suffer from diseases of any sort than where the tha proper conditions condl llona are provided here Is one of the opportunities for a grower of sugar beets to stop a large larga leak in ht his s income on the average the sugar beet yields are only about one halt half of what they should b be band and here Is one of the easy things to do to increase his yield |