CULTURE or RYE BEANS. 81 



bushel less than wheat. The straw being valuable for various purposes, 

 is shipped to the cities in large quantities. A great deal of rye is cut in the 

 spring while green as our first soiling crop, the land being immediately 

 plowed and prepared for corn. This year a fanner in my neighbor- 

 hood cut off ten acres of rye, planted the ground in cucumbers for 

 pickles and intends following with a wheat crop in the fall, thus 

 placing three crops in the ground in one season, as the cucumbers 

 only take up about three months, and will pay a profit of $100 per 

 acre after all labor and expense has been paid. I have known the 

 straw of matured rye to produce two tons per acre, which brought 

 $20 per ton in New York City. In the neighborhood of paper mills 

 rye straw brings from $25 to $30 per ton and is largely grown for this 

 purpose. As a bread grain it is next to wheat in value, and perhaps 

 really more nutritious. Rye is largely used by farmers to seed down 

 with in the fall, and I think it is preferable to wheat for this purpose, 

 when about one and one-half bushels of seed per acre is used, as it 

 protects the young grass through the winter and matures earlier the 

 following summer, being generally cut two weeks in advance of 

 wheat, thus allowing the grass to have freer growth at a season of 

 the year when it grows very rapidly, and also making good pasture 

 in the fall. As a soiling crop it will be fully referred to in the 

 chapter devoted to that subject. 



THE CULTURE OF AMERICAN FIELD BEANS. 



Q. What soil, in your opinion, Mr. Crozier, is best adapted to the 

 American field bean ? I use this distinction because of the fact that 

 in every book, and in nearly every paper, where beans are referred 

 to, it is the English bean that is mentioned, and not our bean, which 

 is an entirely different plant. The English bean, as you are aware, 

 is used for feeding horses only, while ours is wholly used for human 

 food. The plant which bears the English bean has a single straight, 

 stiff stem, which bears several short, thick pods, each containing four 

 or five brown-skinned, hard, kidney-shaped, thick beans, as long and 

 wide, but twice as thick, as our large white beans. 



A. Light, gravelly soils, which can hardly be made available for 

 any other crop, will give a fair yield of beans. They are a crop that 

 we plant after all other work in the spring is done. The land is 

 plowed, harrowed and furrowed out thirty inches apart, and about 

 two bushels of beans sown to the acre, by hand or seed drill. "When 

 drilled, the seeds are dropped about eight inches apart; when planted 

 by hand it is usual to put three or four together at eighteen inches 



