34 GARDENING FOE YOUNG AND OLD. 



are best for this purpose. Unless you have poles from 

 the woods, a good plan is to get inch-square strips from 

 the saw mill or lumber yard. Such strips are handy in 

 a garden for many purposes. Strips an inch and a quar- 

 ter square are much stronger and better, but it is not 

 always so easy to get them. I said Lima-beans could not 

 be grown without some trouble, not only have you to 

 provide poles for them, but they are very tender; they 

 came from a warm climate, and do not like a cold soil. 

 In the tropics the Lima-bean is a perennial plant. It does 

 not need to be raised from seed every year, but the same 

 plant grows on year after year, so the books tell us, and 

 I presume it is true ; at any rate the Lima-bean here 

 seems as though it would grow the year round if the 

 weather was warm enough, as it is often growing when 

 the frosts of autumn strike it. We must do all we can 

 to make the soil warm in the spring and to push the 

 plants forward rapidly in summer. A light, sandy soil is 

 warmer and drier in the spring than the heavier and 

 stiffer soils, and Lima-beans can be planted earlier on 

 warm sandy land than on the clay. But the best crop of 

 Lima-beans I ever raised, was on a soil about half way be- 

 tween a sand and a clay ; and the poorest crop I ever 

 raised was on very light sandy soil. 



I am inclined to think the trouble in the latter case 

 was, that the beans were planted too thickly and were not 

 kept as clean as they should have been. You cannot 

 grow a crop of Lima-beans and a crop of weeds on the 

 same land at the same time ; and if you have three hills 

 of beans where there should be only two, one hill is a 

 weed. Lima-beans should not be planted until the soil 

 is warm, or the seed will rot in the ground. Here we 

 can rarely plant before the middle of May. We make 

 hills about four feet apart, and plant six or seven good 

 beans in a hill ; four plants in a hill are enough, but you 

 know that something may happen to injure or kill some 



