Water for Sahuaro Ranch came by gravity flow from the Arizona Canal about two miles to the north. It was carried from the canal by a ditch on 59th Avenue known as Lateral 18 and then flowed onto the ranch through smaller ditches. Originally these ditches were dirt, and they were not lined with concrete until the 1950s. Gates, and later valves, controlled the flow of water from one field or orchard to the next, with some of these controls set in concrete boxes around the ranch. The ranch's orchards and lawns were irrigated by flooding, with berms keeping the water in place, while fields were irrigated by directing water into furrows, a more efficient method than flooding. In later years, water was lifted from the ditches into the furrows using rubber siphon hoses. Sahuaro Ranch is still irrigated with water from the Arizona Canal, but Lateral 18 is now an underground pipe rather than an open ditch, and many of the ranch's irrigation ditches have also been replaced by buried pipes.