352 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ven^ fully, through these long roots, a diluted and well matured food. 

 It is particular about the kind of food it takes into the organization of the 

 plant. It is very sensitive about that. It is not willing to take food that 

 most plants would take greedily. 



Go up a little further. You know that all leaves evaporate a certain 

 amount of moisture from the under side of the leaf, through some 

 stomatpe, as they are called, two little organs which stand in this way 

 (indicating). When it is dry, under most plants these close up, shorten 

 and close up so as to stop the evaporation of water. These stomatae on 

 the under side of all plants are like that. Now, if we examine these we 

 find that the bean plant is peculiar. These things work very slowly, they 

 do not easily close, and furthermore these cell walls are very delicate. 

 In consequence, if we throw, while they are wet, damp, and at all open, 

 a little bit of soil upon a bean plant, it is sure to get a little bit of dirt 

 into one of those stomatae, and you have a diseased condition which stops 

 the growth of this plant. Take another instance. Owing to these 

 stomatae, the bean plant, particularly at the time of its blossoming, is 

 very sensitive to moisture. If you have just the right degree of moisture, 

 it goes on and does very well. If you have a drouth just at the time the 

 bean is spreading its pollen, that pollen will be a failure. It does not per- 

 fect itself and your beans blight. 



Now, all these points are necessary. A man should love a plant, and he 

 very soon finds out things which he must find out if he would be success- 

 ful in the cultivation of that particular crop. What is the meaning of it? 

 From what I have said of the root, we know this much, that in the bean 

 crop more than in any other it is important to do all your cultivating, all 

 your preparation, before you plant your seed; you must get your ground in 

 the best possible cultivation before you put in the seeds, because when you 

 try to cultivate a bean plant after you have planted it, every cultivation 

 is boiind of necessity to cut a great many of those roots and thus do 

 injury to your plant. Consequently, in order that those roots may find 

 their way easily, you must have your soil fine, so that your roots will run 

 easily. That is the point of success in bean culture, the thorough prepara- 

 tion of the soil Just before you put your beans into the ground, through 

 manurial agents, improving your ground with the kind of food that a bean 

 plant can use; and lastly, avoiding any cultivation which will lead to the 

 cutting and mutilating of the roots, I have seen a crop where a man by 

 simply changing his cultivator one notch and giving it into the hands of 

 another man seriously injured a crop of beans. In the forenoon the cul- 

 tivator ran on the rear teeth instead of on the front teeth. At noon the 

 handles were lifted up a little and the man thought it was not doing quite 

 good enough work and so lowered the draft-bar one notch and bore down 

 on the handles instead of lifting up, with the result that the rear teeth got 

 in close to the plants, and the yield was nearly three bushels per acre 

 less on the part cultivated in the afternoon. That was the cost of chang- 

 ing the cultivator, or lack of understanding of the nature of the plant. It 

 is a simple thing, and three bushels of beans are not very much this year; 

 but that year, when beans were worth $1.50 per bushel, it was quite an 

 important item. A man who loves his plant would never do that, he 

 would love and knpw the plants too well to do it. 



