16 THE CULTURE OF VEGETABLES 



should be put in double rows, three feet apart. If transplanted with 

 care they will receive but a slight check, and will give a successional 

 supply very usefully. 



A sowing may be made towards the end of January, but for the 

 main crop wait until February or March. A strong soil is suitable, 

 and generally speaking a heavy crop of Beans may be taken from a 

 well-managed clay. But any deep cool soil will answer, and where 

 there is a regular annual demand for Beans, the cultivator may be 

 advised to grow both Longpods and Windsors the first for earliness 

 and bulk, the second for quality. There are now at command some 

 remarkable varieties of the Longpod class adapted for exhibition, and 

 these are certainly of fair table quality, though inferior to the Wind- 

 sor. The double rows of maincrop Beans should be fully three feet 

 apart, and the plants should be quite six inches apart in the rows. 

 The preparation of the seed-bed must be of a generous, but need not 

 be of an elaborate, nature. Where grass land and land of question- 

 able quality is broken up and trenched, it will be tolerably safe to 

 crop it with Beans as a first start ; and to prepare it for the crop, a 

 good body of fat stable dung should be laid in between the first and 

 second spit, as this will carry the crop through, while insuring to the 

 subsoil that has been brought up a time of seasoning with the least 

 risk of any consequent loss. 



There is not much more to be said about growing Beans ; the 

 ground must be kept clean, and the hoe will have its work here as 

 elsewhere. The pinching out of the tops as soon as there is a fair 

 show of blossom is a good practice, whether there is fly or no fly, and 

 it is also advisable to root all plants out as fast as they finish their 

 work, for if left they throw up suckers and exhaust the soil to no 

 purpose. The gathering of the crop is often so carelessly performed 

 that the supply is suddenly arrested. 



In cases of emergency, Beans may be forwarded in pots in the 

 greenhouse, or on turf sods in frames for planting out, in precisely the 

 same way that Peas for early crops are forwarded. In all such cases 

 care must be taken that the forcing is of the most moderate character, 

 . or the crop will be poor and late, instead of being plentiful and early. 

 When pushed on under glass for planting out, the young stock must 

 have as much light and air as possible consistent with safety, and a 

 slow healthy growth will better answer the purpose than a rapid 

 growth producing long legs and pale leaves, because the physique of 

 infancy determines in a great degree that of maturity, not less, in 

 plants than in animals, 



