The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Sprinkler Irrigation

There are several advantages in orchard cover crops; the roots keep the soil open to admit air and water, the grass keeps the ground shaded, thereby reducing surface evaporation and high temperatures in the upper soil, the humas resulting from the decomposed cuttings become incorporated in the soil which builds up the soil's water holding capacity; the complete ground cover retards wind erosion.

Frost Control

Unusual results in controlling frost in cranberry culture has been obtained through the use of sprinklers.

Mr. D. J. Crowley, Superintendent of the cranberry Blueberry Laboratory at the State College of Washington makes this report:
"Frost control by sprinkling was worked out at this station in 1925 and 1926, and the preliminary results were noted in our annual reports for those years. This, so far as I have been able to find out, was the first frost control work by means of sprinklers. Due to difficulties in obtaining pumps and other equipment, it was several years later before the industry went into sprinkling in a big way. We had a water supply problem to solve and we solved it by digging sumps or ponds, since free water is generally found in this section at a depth of four or five feet."

"During the intervening years we have found that we can prevent frost injury even when the temperature gets down as low as 25 degrees. When the temperature tails to 28 degrees the water sprinkled on the plants freezes into a sort of slush ice and this apparently protects the plants much as snow would. Thermometers placed on the bog have shown that the temperature rarely goes below }2 degrees in the sprinkled area even when the temperature on the checks reaches as low as 25 degrees."

He adds: "Most of our bogs, at the present time, are covered by sprinklers and we have never failed to get protection since we started using them."

It should be remembered that the cranberry is a low growing shrub. The sprinklers should not be used to give frost protection to trees, since the weight of the ice on the branches causes the limbs to break much as they would in a heavy snow.

Foliage Damage

The objection commonly voiced is that foliage and crops will burn and rot due to sprinkling. If this erroneous statement were true, sprinkler irrigation would be on the way out instead of growing by leaps and bounds. Make your own tests in the sun. It will be revealing. Rainfall sometimes does damage but for some unknown reason sprinkled crops are not damaged. Many fruits that are brought up from the bud under sprinkling are usually above normal quality.