58 ON GRAIN CROPS. 



C. H. HOLMES'S STATEMENT. 



It is singular that the cultivation of the bean is not more extensive 

 among Yankee farmers, who generally have an eye to their own in- 

 terest, for certainly there is no crop raised (except in the neighbor- 

 hood of a market) which yields so great a profit ; — as the bean is 

 adapted to every soil, yielding from fifteen to twenty-five and some- 

 times forty bushels per acre, and requiring a small outlay of manure 

 and labor to its production. The small pea bean has my preference 

 to all others, because it produces more to the acre, is not so liable to 

 be fractured in threshing, and last but not least, is worth twelve per 

 cent, more in the market. On light lands, the bean acquires its pe- 

 culiar name of hush bean, having all its stems high and dry from the 

 ground, and yielding a finer produce than on any other soil. On 

 more fertile and heavy soils, it covers the whole ground with its luxu- 

 riant vines, producing a large crop of beans and straw, the latter 

 being worth about two thirds the price of English hay, for stock of 

 any kind. In preparing the ground for seed, it should be either fall- 

 fallowed or cultivated one year previously, and after repeated plough- 

 ings, four cords of muck composted with one half barn manure, or, 

 what is better, one sixth privy manure, harrowed in, is sufiicient for 

 one acre. It should then be drilled three feet apart, and the beans 

 planted four inches apart in the drills. Two hoeings, accompanied 

 by the cultivator, are sufficient. At harvest, the beans are pulled 

 and stacked, by placing a stake firmly in the ground, around which 

 are thrown stones sufficient to lay them on, which should be done 

 with the roots to the stake : or, two stakes may be firmly set in the 

 ground, and withed a foot therefrom, on which the beans are placed 

 and bound firmly at the top, and thus the beans may remain for 

 weeks, impervious to rains. 



Last year I raised from about five acres of heavy land, manured 

 with four cords of muck compost or four cart loads of peat ashes per 

 acre, one hundred bushels of beans and four tons of straw. This 

 year I planted eight acres of light land, fall-fallowed, manured in the 

 hill with privy compost, seeded with from three to five beans per 

 hill. They grew with great luxuriance, producing from one hundred 

 and twenty-five to two hundred pods per hill, two on one stem. I 

 counted two hundred formed and forty-four unformed pods with from 

 five to seven beans each, or about twelve hundred for one. In Au- 

 gust, owing to the unequal temperature of the weather, they were struck 



