68 



KITCHEN-GARDEN PLANTS, 



[chap. 



and wliich, on 'that account, is justly esteemed by those who like 

 this sort of vegetable, which, I must confess, I do not. All this 

 tribe of beans thrive best in moist and stiffish ground ; but, if we 

 desire to have them early, we must sow them early ; and, near a 

 wall, facing to the south, they may be sowed in November and 

 even in October ; and, if kept earthed up pretty nearly to their 

 tops, and in very sharp weather, covered from the frost, they will 

 stand the winter pretty well ; and will be a little earlier than those 

 which are sowed in the latter end of February or beginning of 

 March. Another way to have these early beans is to sow a small 

 patch, and to let them come up within an inch of one another. 

 Standing thus upon a small piece of ground, they are easily pro- 

 tected in sharp weather ; and are ready to be removed, by trans- 

 planting in the first mild weather in March ; but even then they 

 should go into the warmest part of the garden. Another sowing, 

 even of these, should take place in the latter end of February, or 

 very early in March : which is the time also for sowing the Wind- 

 sor bean, the long-pod, and all the other varieties. Of the Wind- 

 sor bean and the long-pod another sowing should take place in 

 April, and in every month until July ; that is to say, if the family 

 like them. The sowings ought to be of small extent, however, for 

 the crop is large, and the plant, when it has shed its blossoms, is 

 no great beauty, though exceeding almost all others in the sweet- 

 ness of its fiower. Mice are great enemies of beans, or more pro- 

 perly speaking, they love them too much, as the cannibal said of his 

 fellow creatures. This love, however, sometimes proves extremely 

 inconvenient to the bean-planter ; and, therefore, these gentry must 

 be kept down, which they easily are, however, by brick-traps, 

 w hich gardeners know very well how to set. The depth at w hich 

 the larger beans are sowed is about three inches, and the smaller 

 ones about two inches and a half ; but, in every case, all the earth 

 drawn out of the drill should be put in again upon the beans, and 

 trodden down upon them with the v;hole w'eight of the body 

 of a stout man ; for the more closely they are pressed into the 

 ground, and the ground is pressed upon them, the more certainly 

 and the more vigorously will they grow ; and the more difficult 

 too, will it be for the mice to displace them. 



1 24. BEAN (KIDNEY), which the French call HAPtlCOT.— 

 The varieties here are perfectly endless ; but there are two distinct 

 descriptions of the kidney bean, dwarfs, and climhers. The mode 



