632 The Cultivation of Field Beans. [nov,, 



It will be seen that even in Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire 

 and Suffolk, the highest upon the list, the acreage is not 

 very large. 



The bean, being a leguminous plant, naturally takes the 

 place to a certain extent of clover, and being under certain 

 conditions a cleaning crop, it can replace a fallow, but it is 

 •a better plan to ignore the latter possibility and consider 

 it only as a leguminous crop. It is not suited to the 

 lighter soils and is grown almost exclusively upon clays 

 .and the heavier loams, particularly those which contain an 

 appreciable amount of lime. It is to this cause that the 

 limitation of the acreage is due. 



In many districts where beans are grown, red clover seed is 

 also a common crop. Experience has shown that, if the land 

 is farmed upon the standard four course rotation, the red 

 clover will not be successful every fourth year, but will pro- 

 duce a good crop when grown at eight year intervals. In 

 this way an eight course rotation has originated, in which 

 beans replace red clover. In this rotation during the eight 

 years there are four white straw crops, two fallows, and two 

 leguminous crops. 



Varieties. — The varieties, especially seedsmen's varieties, 

 are not at all numerous, and can be divided into two main 

 classes, namely, winter and spring. There are more kinds 

 of the latter than the former, the chief being the Black Eyed, 

 the White Eyed, the Heligoland, the Mazagan, the Teck, the 

 Cluster, and the Red. There is a very large amount of purely 

 local prejudice in favour of the different kinds, but in experi- 

 ments at Ridgmont the Red Spring variety has produced 

 the most profitable results on a typical bean soil. Change 

 of seed from a different district in England produces a very 

 slight increase, if any, over home-grown seed. Seed from 

 similar soils in Lincolnshire, Essex, Suffolk, Buckingham- 

 shire, Oxfordshire and other counties has been used 

 to compare with home-grown Bedfordshire seed, but the 

 results did not show definitely that the seed from any one 

 district was to any noticeable extent preferable to that which 

 was home-grown. At the same time it is probably advisable 

 to obtain a change of seed periodically, and to get it from 

 a different class of soil. Seed from a light loam or chalky 

 soil makes a very good change on to the heavy clay. 



