TIIB AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
59 
from the lowest of the flowers. This will take off about an 
inch and a half, and the plants will remain vigorous. Severe 
topping lowers their vigour, for the leaves are their lungs, and 
the “hacking” process is always guarded against by the 
prudent gardener. 
Early Crops. — If beans are required at the earliest possible 
moment, and the season for early sowing out of doors has been 
lost, we must have the aid of glass, and sow for transplanting. 
A gentle hotbed will start the seed nicely, but a strong heat 
will produce weak plants scarcely worth putting out. Sow on 
grass turves, laid grass-side downwards, or in boxes or pots, 
taking care to let the young plants have plenty of light and 
air, to keep them stubby from the first. The roughest of 
contrivances for shelter will suffice to push the seed forward 
and help the plants until the time comes for putting out. 
Select for them a warm south border ; get them out as early 
as possible, choosing mild, showery weather for the transplant- 
ing, and plant them in shallow trenches, filling in round their 
roots with old rotten manure in a powdery state, or old leaf- 
mould, or whatever else of a similar nature may be at hand, 
to coax the tender roots into action speedily. 
The green plant is a first-rate fodder for milch kine, and 
therefore if an extra breadth of beans is grown, they may be 
drawn as needed to amuse the cows, and give the grass land a 
better chance for haymaking. 
Second Crop. — On several occasions we have had a second 
crop of beans from the same plants, having encouraged the 
suckers to rise by cutting down the stems that bore the first 
crop. It is only in a long, hot, showery season that the 
suckers rise sufficiently strong to produce anything, and then, 
so far as our experience enables us to say, they make bu a 
poor return for the ground they occupy. It is well, however, 
for the cultivator to know all that may be done, and it is a 
fact that in a favourable season a second crop may be taken 
from the same plants. 
As remarked above, the bean is rich in phosphates and 
alkalies, and hence is an exhaustive crop. There is nothing 
better in the way of manure than good stable dung, half-rotten, 
and the ground should be deeply broken up ; but guano may 
be employed with advantage, and the best mode of procedure 
is to sprinkle a little at the bottom and on the sides of every 
trench as the digging proceeds. The gypsum or plaster of 
