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 several million 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- 
