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.