THE AMATEUR’S KITCIIEH GARDEN - . G3 
when they first come in, vegetables are plentiful, but, as they 
are going out, vegetables become scarce. Thus, in the earliest 
days of French beans and runners, there are at command 
cauliflowers, peas, spinach, broad beans, and new potatoes. 
Rapidly these drop out of the list, and, as the season advances, 
kidney beans and marrows are almost the only vegetables of a 
delicate kind available. For just this reason we do not usually 
sow until the 1st of June, and we never miss sowing two or 
three sorts — the common scarlet-runner being always one — 
about the 15th or 20th of June. In southern counties, and 
especially on light soils, sowing may be made as late as the 
first week in July, but on our cold soil that is too late, for just 
as the plants should be in full bearing, the fogs, frosts, and 
heavy rains take the shine (with the fruit as a make-weight) 
clean out of them. 
All the sorts that require stakes pay better for staking than 
trailing, provided only that stakes can be obtained for 
moderate labour or reasonable outlay. There are a few 
valuable varieties that rise only three or four feet high, for 
which mere refuse brushwood will suffice. But if it is out of 
the question to stake the running sorts, they may be kept in a 
compact state of growth by constant pinching away of the 
points of the shoots, which should be done simultaneously 
with the gathering of the pods as often as possible. It is by 
this mode of procedure that the scarlet-runner is kept in a 
dwarf state as a field crop, and not by the sowing of a dwarf 
sort, which many people believe the market-gardeners to 
possess, and keep to themselves. In the books we find it re- 
commended to pinch back all running sorts, even when they 
are well staked ; but this is neither necessary nor desirable, for 
they bear more abundantly if allowed to grow to their full 
height unchecked, and therefore the cultivator may give them 
the tallest stakes he can afford, and consider the ladder a 
needful agent in the gathering of the crop. When string is 
used for training runner beans, it should be slack enough to 
allow for contraction in wet weather. When runner beans are 
grown on hot, dry soils, the seed should be sown in manured 
trenches, to facilitate the operation of watering ; for if ever 
water is given to this crop, it must be in considerable quanti- 
ties, with an interval of a week or so between the several 
supplies. The dwarfest sorts, however, are far better adapted 
to starving soils than any of the runners. The roots of all the 
