Vegetable Growing for Market 83 



an annual, the Runner Bean is really a perennial plant, and produces large 

 Dahlia-like roots. It is a native of South America, and like its cousin, the 

 Dwarf or French Bean, is much more tender than its other relative the 

 Broad Bean. Owing to the expensiveness of staking, market-garden and 

 farm cultivation does not really bring out the capabilities of a Runner 

 Bean crop. A few years ago, by growing 66 plants 1 ft. apart in a row 

 70 ft. long, running north and south, 312 Ib. of edible pods were picked- 

 just under 5 Ib. to each plant. As 7000 plants 1 ft. apart, in rows 6 ft. 

 asunder, could be got on an acre of ground, it would be possible to obtain 

 from 30,000 to 35,000 Ib. of pods to the acre. The usual crop averages 

 from 10,000 to 13,000 Ib., while the stems and leaves weigh a little 

 more than half. [j. w.] 



The Runner Bean is a crop grown by cultivators who would style them- 

 selves farmers more than market gardeners, yet it can be claimed as a 

 market-garden crop. Sowings are made in May in drills 2 ft. 6 in. or 3 ft. 

 apart. Most market gardeners will have a crop already in the ground 

 on which the Runner Beans are planted. At one time the Beans were 

 planted 5 ft. from row to row and staked. This plan has now been 

 abandoned in favour of placing the rows closer together and stopping the 

 twining stems by frequently pinching off the tops. It is curious that a 

 German grower visiting this country in the summer of 1910 expressed 

 himself as most struck among all the things he saw on a market garden 

 by this plan of stopping Runner Beans. [w. G. L.] 



A large area is devoted to this crop in the Evesham district. Seldom 

 do late Runner Beans pay for sending to market, though the cause for 

 that is somewhat mysterious: because it is a common experience to learn 

 that the public cannot obtain Beans for love or money in September 

 unless they themselves grow them yet the Beans realize nothing if sent 

 to the wholesale market. Such being the case, the grower's chief objective 

 is earliness. Early Runner Beans are valuable, and some risk is de- 

 liberately incurred in order to obtain an early supply of pods. Xot only 

 are warm positions given the crop, but seed is sown very early, so early, 

 that the plants are through the soil long before there is likely to be 

 any immunity from frost; but their destruction or injury is risked. Often 

 the risk has been successful, particularly in positions not too low; but 

 Beans in the latter positions are frequently injured. 



Sowing takes place at the end of April and beginning of May: and the 

 Beans are sown in rows at 3 ft. apart. To the ordinary reader this distance 

 suggests a serious error: but in the market gardens of Worcestershire 

 generally, sticks are not used to Runner Beans, they are kept dwarf by 

 systematic topping weekly at first directly the plants commence to 

 extend their shoots in search of support. A few growers do use sticks, 

 but they are in a very small minority. As bean sticks are nearly always 

 expensive, and in some places unobtainable, their cost is thus saved, and 

 so is the time that would have been required to fix the sticks in the ground 

 in summer and their removal in autumn. By the regular topping, to which 



