site logo

Creamery Wastes For Irrigation

Categories: Soils, Fertilizers and Irrigation

Will the waste water from a creamery, pumped into a ditch and used for

irrigating sandy loam orchard land, or nursery stack, in any way be

injurious to the land or the trees?



It will depend upon the amounts of salt and alkaline washing materials

which it carries. This would be governed, of course, by the amount of

fresh water used for dilution in the irrigation ditch. There are two

ways to determine the q
estion. One would be to make an analysis of a

sample of the water taken when it contains the largest amount of these

materials after the dilution with ditch water. Another way would be to

plant some corn, squashes, barley and other plants, so that they would

be freely irrigated by the water during one growing season. This would

be rather better than an analysis, because everybody could see whether

the plants grew well or not, and would be apt to be better convinced by

what they see than by an opinion which a chemist might give on the basis

of an analysis. The use of this water on a sandy loam would obviously be

less injurious than upon a heavy retentive soil.



More

;