EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 



141 



to be good, when one morning I found every pod rusty. You 

 ought to have seen nie get after them. I wanted humus bad, 

 yet I burned every one of them. We consulted and then 

 planted some more right on top of the old hills where we 

 pulled the first ones out. We watched the second crop come 

 on — people said we must not spray until a few leaves were 

 out. We waited until a few leaves were out and the rust 

 came again. We planted the third crop, and as soon as the 

 first sign of growth came through the dirt I just drowned 

 them with Bordeaux. We didn't have one single sign of 

 rust on one of the beans ; they were absolutely perfect, and 

 the seed all came out of the same bag. I sprayed three times 

 and I felt that we had headed the rust off. Of course we 

 don't know just what the result would have been if we had 

 not sprayed. I kept the beans and sent them to the experi- 

 ment station. 1 have planted them for the last three years 

 and have had no* rust on them, and the experiment station 

 reports no rust. We sprayed but once after they began to 

 blossom. 



Lima beans. I never cared to break my back carrying 

 poles for beans and twisting the vines so they could untwist 

 again and then when the beans are eight or nine feet high 

 and frost comes, having to lift the poles out in order to get 

 the beans and then not finding more than a quarter of them 

 ripe, — so we conceived the idea of allowing them to run on 

 this wire fence and when they got to the height of the fence 

 we clipped the vines. The result was we got a yield just 

 exactly three times as great as raising them on poles. I fig- 

 ured it in this way : If you clip the ends off you keep the 

 strength down below and get better pods ; then by running 

 on the fence you get good air and plenty of sunlight; while 

 on the pole they make a solid mat of vines and half the beans 

 can't grow or mature ; they keep climbing and making bloom 

 and the results are not satisfactory. In the fall we take up 

 the fence, roll it and put it away until the next spring; the 

 fence is just ordinary poultry wire, 4 feet high. I always 

 put it running north and south so as to get plenty of light and 

 sun on both sides. 



