time for transplanting the rice, when the plants are already provided with a strong root system and are capable of at once appropriating any soluble plant food which may develop about their roots or be carried downward over them.
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Fig. 154.—Watermelons, with the ground heavily mulched with straw, growing on low beds under conditions similar to those of Fig. 153.
Although the drains are of the surface type and but
eighteen inches to three feet in depth, they are sufficiently
numerous and close so that, although the soil is continuously
nearly filled with water, there is a steady percolation
of the fresh, fully aerated water carrying an
abundance of oxygen into the soil to meet the needs of the
roots, so that watermelons, egg plants, musk melons and
taro are grown in the rotations on the small paddies
among the irrigated rice after the manner seen in the
illustrations. In Fig. 153 each double row of egg plants is
separated from the next by a narrow shallow trench
which connects with a head drain and in which water was
standing within fourteen inches of the surface. The
same was true in the case of the watermelons seen in
Pig. 154, where the vines are growing on a thick layer of
