ESSEX SOCIETY. 41 



market. On light lands, the bean acquires its peculiar name of 

 bush 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 

 luxuriant 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 ploughings, four cords of muck composted 

 with one half barn manure, or, what is better, one sixth privy 

 manure, harrowed in, is sufficient 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, ma- 

 nured 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 luxu- 

 riance, 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 August, owing 

 to the unequal temperature of the weather, they were struck 

 with a mildew or rust, and, instead of one hundred and fifty 

 bushels, I raised only fifty-seven bushels. Another piece of 

 heavy land, which I planted in drills, with corn in hills, shared 

 the same fate, producing only eight bushels. My whole crop 

 amounts to sixty-five bushels of good beans, worth, and engaged 

 at, two dollars per bushel. At the last hoeing of the piece, I sowed 

 grass seed in the intervals, which looks finely. 

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