CHAPTER XXV. 

 BEANS IN THE MARKET GARDEN. 



Beans to the Southern trucker always means "snaps," or string beans; 

 since these are about the only beans that it pays him to grow for Northern 

 shipment. Snaps are one of the crops the profit in which depends on their 

 earliness, and though a legume, it will always pay the market gardener to use 

 some nitrogen in his fertilizer for the crop, since they are quickly grown and 

 are off before the best of the nitrogen gathering begins. To the Southern 

 market gardener the crop of snaps means a crop of hay, for as soon as the 

 beans are shipped he turns the plants under, harrows the land smoothly and 

 simply waits for his hay crop to grow. This is the ubiquitous crab grass, 

 which at once covers every vacant spot in the Southern market garden in 

 summer, and makes an excellent hay crop to follow some early crop. Hence 

 it is better to give the bean land a fairly liberal dressing, as the hay crop will 

 be all the better for what the beans do not use. It will be all the better not 

 to use the common Southern method of putting the fertilizers in the furrow 

 alone, but to sow it broadcast. For the bean crop, to be followed by crab 

 grass hay, we would use 500 pounds per acre of the following mixture. The 

 same mixture is equally good in the North, and the celery can follow the beans 

 with additional fertilization: Acid phosphate, 1,400 pounds; cotton seed 

 meal, 400 pounds; muriate of potash, 200 pounds, to make ton of 2,000 

 pounds. 



LIMA BEANS. 



These are a more important crop in the North than the South. The 

 Large White lima bean so popular in the North, is a very poor cropper in the 

 South, and hence the butter bean (or Seewee, the small lima) is generally 

 used, and the early ripening form of this, the Henderson Bush lima is most 

 generally used of late years. Lima beans differ from most other legumes in 



(200) 



