WAYS WITH ^CLIMBING BEANS 147 



good crop of pods. The Green Windsor is the best known broad 

 bean. 



Climbing Beans. Pole beans are usually more susceptible to 

 heat and drought than the better bush varieties, and they are dis- 

 appointing in other ways. Near the coast, however, they may be 

 grown and trained in any way the grower pleases, from a six-foot 

 staff to a whole wigwam of poles and strings. In the catalogues of 

 California seedsmen many good varieties for amateur trial are de- 

 scribed. The best climbing bean for most California situations is 

 the Kentucky Wonder, or Old Homestead, which bears a mass of 

 pods when grown to a six-foot stake. It is quite hardy and can 

 be safely planted a week or more before many other varieties. It 

 is a medium early bean and takes very readily to the poles ; wonder- 

 fully prolific, the vines being actually loaded from top to bottom 

 with pods from six to nine inches in length; as string beans, the 

 pods are nearly round, tender and very solid. The White-seeded 

 Kentucky Wonder has recently become popular with market garden- 

 ers because its pod-color is very attractive and it is said to be more 

 resistant of mildew. The Gray-seeded Wonder is also esteemed. 

 The Case Knife and the Asparagus or Yard Long are also excellent 

 climbing beans ; the latter especially as a string bean. 



Trellising Beans. Instead of unsightly crooked poles, subject 

 to being blown down and always to be set up in the spring and 

 stacked in the fall, always to be renewed about every four years, 

 set six-foot posts about a rod apart through the beanfield and string 

 a wire over the tops of them above the rows of beans. The end 

 posts are braced. A cotton string is hung from the wire to the 

 ground at each hill of beans, 15 inches apart. The strings support 

 the vines till they reach the wires where they make a neat hedge 

 effect with just room between the rows for pickers. 



Perennial Beans. It is not unusual for the California gardener 

 to find when he is digging over his bean ground in the spring that 

 the old roots of the preceding crop are not dead but are making 

 new sprouts. One grower in Alameda who had this experience 

 was adventurous enough to save these roots and got a second year's 

 crop from them. Afterward he transplanted such roots, mulched 

 them in the winter and finally had bean plants two, three and four 

 years old, bearing profusely and making from two to four vines 

 from each root, growing twelve feet high, and yielding heavily. 

 The crowns of such roots are often about two inches in diameter. 

 These beans are usually of the scarlet runner class, though some of 

 the white climbing forms have perennial roots. In an amateur's 

 garden they are very interesting and useful in places where frosts 

 are over before heat enough comes to start the top growth from 

 the perennial roots. 



Transplanted Beans. Beans may be easily grown early in 

 moist sand in a protected place and set out when several inches 

 high when the soil and air are fit to receive them. The best way to 



