CULTURAL DIRECTIONS 229 



country. Millions of bushels of dried beans are produced 

 annually by farmers, especially in Michigan, New York 

 and California, while many other states produce large 

 amounts. Most of the dried beans are of the small type, 

 although California grows annually over 1,000,000 bush- 

 els of limas. Beans are produced on a large scale for 

 canning, and shell beans occupy an important place in the 

 operations of some commercial gardeners. 



292. As soil improvers. — As the bean is a legume, and 

 consequently a nitrogen-gathering plant, it occupies a 

 prominent place in the commercial garden from the stand- 

 point of soil improvement. It is a great advantage to be 

 able to remove a profitable cash crop and to leave the 

 land in better condition for subsequent crops. The 

 bean, then, is a soil-improving rather than a soil-impov- 

 erishing crop. In recognition of this benefit, beans are 

 sometimes planted in preference to more profitable crops 

 which exhaust the soil to a greater extent. When snap 

 or shell beans are grown, no part of the plant is removed 

 except the pods and their contents, and in such instances 

 the improvement in soil fertility should be especially 

 marked. Because of their power to improve soils beans 

 should be used more generally as inter-tillage crops. (See 

 Chapter XXIII.) 



Dr. B. D. Halstead of the New Jersey Experiment Sta- 

 tion has observed that the tubercles are much more 

 numerous on bean roots in old land than in new, and that 

 the successive cropping of this legume increases the 

 number of tubercles and also the yield of beans. While 

 mention is made of the unsuccessful use of commercial 

 cultures to secure more thorough inoculation, it is highly 

 probable that soil from old bean fields, applied at the rate 

 of 300 to 500 pounds an acre to land where beans have 

 not been grown, would make nodule formation more ac- 

 tive and yields larger. The results of many experiments 

 in inoculating for alfalfa and other legumes would sug- 



