KITCHEN GARDEN. 167 



each other. Four or five beans, and two or three 

 stout poles nine or ten feet in length, are sufficient 

 for each hill. When the beans begin to run they 

 should be trained to mount the poles, for it is only 

 by doing so that they will receive that degree of 

 air and of sunshine which is necessary to the pro- 

 duction of their fruit.* 



Our remarks thus far have been confined, or 

 nearly so, to the sowing of the bean. Those which 

 follow apply to its management after that work is 

 over, and are common to the labours necessary or 

 useful to the whole family. When the plant has 

 attained the length of three or four inches, the earth 

 about its roots should be loosened with the hoe, and 

 a fresh portion of it drawn up to the stem. The 

 rule for subsequent labours is to hoe again when 

 the flowers begin to show themselves, and a third 

 time about a month after the second hoeing; but 

 the better practice is to take as our guide, in this 

 respect, not the condition of the plant, but that of 

 the soil and of the weather ; and, whenever the latter 

 is dry and hot, or the former hard, or baked, or in- 

 fested with weeds, repeat the hoeing ; remember- 

 ing that it is not easy to commit ahy excess in this 

 way ; and, in general, that the oftener the work is 

 repeated (unless the weather be wet), the finer and 

 more abundant will be the crop. 



When the bean is sufficiently in blossom (which 

 is taken for granted as soon as the lower or first 

 formed pods begin to swell), it is a practice not un- 

 common to pinch off the tops of the vines; the ob- 

 ject of which is to prevent the plant from having 

 more pods than it can bring to perfection, and to 

 render better those which are left, by giving to them 

 a nutriment which would have otherwise gone to 



* The Carolina bean is but a variety of the Lima, and is 

 therefore to be managed in the same way, with the exception 

 that, being less in volume, four feet between the hills give suf- 

 ficient room for it. 



