1889 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
697 
BEANS. 
(Continued from Page 691.) 
would say that our attention was first 
drawn to this novelty in the summer of ’87 
by Messrs. T. \Y r . Wood & Sons, seedsmen, 
Richmond, Va., who had had a small sup 
ply of it for two or three years. We pur¬ 
chased the entire stock from them in the 
fall of ’87 and had the stock grown in ’88 in 
at least six different localities: Genesee 
County, New York; Rockland County, 
N. Y.; Monmouth County, New Jersey ; 
Hudson County, N. J.; Virginia and 
Georgia. This wide distribution of the 
stock seed proved conclusively that it is a 
variety which will do well in any section 
where the pole Limas will. From Messrs. 
Wood & Sous we learned that they had ob¬ 
tained the stock of this variety from an old 
trucker in the vicinity of Lynchburg, Va., 
who had grown it for a number of years 
for the Lynchburg market; he stated that 
he had procured it originally from a negro 
who claimed to have found a single plant 
growing by the roadside in the mountains 
of Virginia. The darky’s story,‘however, 
is rather unlikely, as in all probability it 
originated as a “ sport ” from the Carolina 
or Sieva. pktkr Henderson & co. 
THE ORIGIN OF BURPEE’S BUSH 
LIMA. 
Burpee’s Busn Lima originated 50 miles 
from here with one of our customers, a pro¬ 
gressive Chester County (Pa.), trucker. In 
1883 his crop of large Lima pole beans was 
destroyed by the cut-worms, and as he was 
going over the field to pull up the poles he 
discovered a perfectly formed bush only six 
inches high. Upon examination he found 
that the plant had been out off about half 
an inch above the soil, and that it had bent 
over and re-rooted, resulting in this bush. 
He is disposed to give credit for what proved 
eventually to be his good fortune, to the 
cut-worm. However this may be, the fact 
remains that this little bush showed no 
tendency to run, was carefully guarded 
ami matured three small pods, each con¬ 
taining one large bean. These three beans 
were carefully planted in the spring of 1884. 
One of them produced the usual Lima pole 
bean vine, while the other two retained the 
perfect bush character of their parent, but, 
being more vigorous, bore large pods, con¬ 
taining beans fully equal in size to the large 
Lima pole bean. Since 1884 he has been 
carefully cultivating and developing the 
bush variety, rigidly discarding any plants 
showing a tendency to throw out runners, 
until now (Sept. 14) his entire field presents 
as perfect a type of dwarf bush beans as 
even the long-established dwarf German 
wax beans. Last winter we purchased the 
right to the exclusive control of this bean 
and the originator gave us a few beans to 
plant in our trial grounds, where they can 
be seen in comparison with Kumerle’s 
Dwarf, and Henderson’s Bush Lima. 
I send the RURAL fresh leaves of each of 
these, from which alone it can see the dis¬ 
tinct character of ours, as well as in the 
pods and beaus. Although the bust to be 
introduced, I think ours probably was the 
first of the dwarf Limas originated. Hen¬ 
derson’s is a dwarf form of the small 
Sieva, and Kumerle’s is a dwarf type of 
Dreer’s Lima. I have just now been com¬ 
paring the different Limas in our trial 
grounds, and find that the pods of our bush 
Lima average fully as large as the pods of 
the King of the Garden Pole Lima. Some 
time since while going over his crop with 
the originator, I spoke particularly of the 
wonderfully prolific character of the dwarf 
bushy plants. He said: “Yes! I counted 52 
mature pods on one plant when harvesting 
my last crop.” This led me to examine 
more closely, and the first plant I selected 
bore 58 pods and was still full of blossoms. 
The plants send out numerous stiff, up¬ 
right branches almost from the very 
ground. The editor will notice the thick¬ 
ness of the main stem and branches, also 
the unusual size, dark-green color and 
thick, leathery substance of the leaves, indi¬ 
cating their strong constitution and vigor¬ 
ous growth. W. ATI.EE BURPEE. 
[The plant of the above variety sent to 
this office bore 26 pods of which the one il¬ 
lustrated is as large as any. Most of the 
pods had three beans, a fow two and sever¬ 
al four. Eds. | 
ORIGIN OF KUMERLE’S DWARF 
LIMA. 
From James M. Thorburn & Co., the in¬ 
troducers of the Kumerle, we learn that for 
a number of years a dwarf form has been 
noticed among Dreer’s Pole Lima, in vari¬ 
ous parts of the country, and from these 
selections have been made resulting in the 
dwarf variety now introduced as Kumerle, 
of which there is, as yet, a very small sup¬ 
ply. A single bush sent to this office bore 47 
pods, most of which contained three beans, 
some four and occasionally only two. The 
beans were fully as large as those of Dreer’s 
Lima. The illustration, which is a faithful 
portrait of this plant, shows the average 
size of mature pods and seeds. 
The R. N.-Y. raised about one dozen 
plants of the Kumerle. We find it a true 
Dreer’s Lima. The bushes are very prolific 
and vigorous without the least sign of run¬ 
ning to vine. 
Henderson’s Sieva was planted the 
same time as pole Limas at the Rural 
Grounds and matured about 10 days 
earlier. The bushes bore all the way 
from 25 to 50 pods averaging nearly 
three beans each. A few pods contained 
four. The leaves are smaller, of a much 
darker color and firmer texture. The up¬ 
per side is glossy. The bushes averaged 18 
inches high, the flowers smaller and the ra¬ 
cemes twice as long. The illustration 
shows one of the plants, as well as the pod 
and seeds. 
dl)C (SlUTU'Tl. 
THE VEGETABLE GARDEN. 
WM. FALCONER. 
The Season. —The weather recently has 
been raw, cold and wet, and the land is wet 
and in poor condition for fall-growing veg¬ 
etables. But we have not yet (October 3d) 
had any frost. 
Lima Beans.—L ots yet but they are get¬ 
ting old as we had no bright, warm weath¬ 
er in late summer to set and fill up a suc¬ 
cession of pods. I am gathering the well- 
filled but not over-ripe beans for use in 
winter. 
SNAP Beans are yielding well, and I am 
now picking Mohawk and Valentine that 
were sown August 8. The same kinds 
sown August 16 are in bloom and begin¬ 
ning to pod. I have just placed frames and 
sashes over them, and in this way and by 
banking around the frames with earth or 
manure, and covering over the sashes with 
straw mats at night, I expect to pick snap 
beans until into November. 
Rabbits are now very destructive to 
young snap beans ; they eat the tops. A 
dusting of lime, or plaster and Paris-green 
scattered on the beans when they are moist 
will save them. 
Field Mice now take to the bean frames 
and work much damage. To hunt them up 
and kill them is the only remedy. 
Celery is growing superbly. 1 never 
had finer late celery than I have now, and 
that too from seed sown May 24. All cel¬ 
ery for use before New Year should now be 
banked up fully, and even our latest celery 
should be “ handled ” so as to have it in 
close-together heads, and, in rigorous dis¬ 
tricts, to save it from frost. While a few 
degrees of frost may not visibly hurt celery, 
it certainly does it no good, therefore 
protect it from frost by banking it 
up with earth. North of New York prepare 
for laying it past for winter about the end 
of this mouth; south of New York from the 
fifth to the 15tli of November is the usual 
time for this work. 
The White Plume Celery.— At Buffalo 
some weeks ago, a gardener from Ohio was 
telling Peter Henderson and myself that he 
finds no difficulty in keeping over this cel¬ 
ery until April; in fact he tiuus that it 
keeps just as well as any other kind. Well, 
perhaps it does. I’m not as smart as he is 
by a couple of months. I never yet had a 
white or a yellow self-blanching celery of 
any sort that kept in paying condition into 
March. 
Peas. —These look well. I am now pick¬ 
ing very good Daniel O’Rourke Peas from 
August-16 sowing ; in fact this, one of the 
poorest peas in quality, is the best late pea 
I have. Blue Beauty is good but now a 
week later than O’Rourke; in early summer 
there would be only a couple or three days’ 
difference between them. 
Spinach isn’t growing as well as I would 
like. So much wet weather kills many of 
the germinating seedlings and rots off older 
plants, and now the never-failing leaf-min¬ 
er maggot comes to prey upon and spot the 
leaves. The young spinach we now are 
picking was sown August 24th. For win¬ 
tering in frames we sowed two weeks later. 
New Zealand Spinach is most esteemed 
for hot summer weather when common 
spinach can be had only with difficulty, but 
it also comes in splendidly in cold, raw sum¬ 
mers too. We never had it finer than it has 
been this year. And as it is tender I have 
covered a patch of it with frames for further 
use. 
Lettuces. —We hope to cut from out 
doors for a month yet. but are prepared for 
emergency by having plenty in frames. We 
plant our winter lettuces in the permanent 
frames in our regular frame ground. Let¬ 
tuces for use in October—December occupy 
the least sunny frames, because having 
made their growth early they need little 
more than keeping over, hence there’s no 
call for the best places for them; those for 
use in December—March are planted in the 
warmest and sunniest frames, because this 
is the wintriest season, and the plants grow 
but little, and as they are apt to be much 
covered up, the warm position saves in cov¬ 
ering, and permits of more drying and ven¬ 
tilating than could be done in less favored 
parts. From March onward we get our 
supply from hot-beds which generally are 
the frames emptied in December and Janu¬ 
ary. Don’t coddle lettuces, but keep them 
uncovered in favorable weather. Young 
seedlings and half-grown stock will stand 
several degrees of frost without hurt, but 
full-hearted lettuces should be protected 
from frost, heavy rains, sleet or snow. 
Young lettuces for filling into frames from 
now till January should be kept in a cold- 
frame and pricked off two or three inches 
apart. 
Parsley. —Lift a lot of roots aud plant 
them in an old cracker or soap box in light 
soil, or take a nail keg and bore a lot of 
half-inch to one-inch holes thickly all over 
its sides, and into these holes, with just the 
top of the crown sticking out, stick some 
parsley roots, filling up with soil as you go 
along, and you will have a really nice par¬ 
sley patch in your cellar all winter. 
Corn sown later than July 19, is not go¬ 
ing to ripen up fit for using. 
Carrots sown August 6, will make nice 
roots, but anything sown later than that 
will not amount to much. Full-grown 
carrots have lost their leaves more than 
usual. 
Beets. —On light soil the August sowings 
are not going to amount to anything, but 
on rich land sowings made August 6 
promise well. Eclipse is a more vigorous 
grower than the Egyptian aud I like it 
better, for it bulbs up quicker. I do not 
expect to gather the winter crops for a 
month yet. 
farm (Topics. 
CANADIAN NOTES. 
Farmers in Ontario, especially in the 
Ottawa district, have full barns this sea¬ 
son. Grain is good, and the straw crop is 
simply enormous. Oats and wheat stood 
level with the tops of the fences as long as 
they could stand, and then went down un¬ 
der their heavy loads of grain. A wet har¬ 
vest has injured a considerable percentage, 
but the crop as a whole is most satisfactory. 
The potato crop is the best we have had for 
some years. But for the demand east, west 
and south, they would still be selling, as 
they did the latter half of August, as low 
down as 35 cents per sack of 90 pounds. 
Within the past two weeks shipments east 
aud west have created a demand, and prices 
have run up to 60 and 70 cents, and are like¬ 
ly to go still higher. By the way, I have 
just heard that in the county of Bonaven- 
ture, P. Q., the habitants have never yet 
seen a potato bug in their fields. It would 
be a capital place in which to buy seed. 
The plants bear abundance of seed-balls, 
aud the vitality of the potato has not been 
sapped by annual attacks of the bugandthe 
use of arsenical poisons. We could not 
raise potatoes here at all without Paris- 
green, and plenty of it. 
Silo building and fodder-corn are the 
questions that are agitating the minds of 
the more enterprising of our farmers here 
at present. My cheap wooden silos, capacity 
100 tons and 92 tons respectively, costing 
only $100 and §150 complete, have been in¬ 
spected by a great many growers of fodder- 
corn, and all who have seen them have de¬ 
clared their intention to build silos for 
themselves. Into one of my silos I have 
put 75 tons of green oats, peas, barley, 
vetches, thistles, mustard, lamb’s-quarters 
and other weeds that had grown on a heav¬ 
ily fertilized and exceedingly dirty field. 
It is a regular vegetable hash, and if it 
cures well, as I expect it will, my cattle 
and horses will not want for variety in 
their food next winter. I am watching 
with considerable interest an experiment in 
siloing thistles. My neighbor sowed about 
an acre of rich garden soil with spring 
wheat. One particular ridge of that acre 
sent up such a mass of Canadian thistles 
as I had never seen before. Interspersed 
through it were a few strong plants of 
wheat. The ridge had been under squash 
vines the previous season, and the rough 
leaf and vine had caught and held every 
thistle down passing that way and the re¬ 
sult was the magnificent crop of thistles. 
Rather than let them go to seed I obtained 
permission of my neighbor to cut that 
ridge out of his grain and put it in my silo. 
The thistles were a perfect mass of sweet- 
scented, purple bloom when I cut them 
making three heavy wagon loads, and they 
are now in my silo, cut in the regular fash¬ 
ion, their power for mischief destroyed for¬ 
ever. If they should prove to be good feed 
for stock, I can make cheaper silage by 
growing the Canadian thistle than I can 
with corn. They will produce two heavy 
crops in a season ; nothing to pay for seed 
or cultivation, proof against excessive 
rains, spring frosts, bugs, cut-worms, 
crows, cold spells, smut and every other ill 
that com is heir to. There may be a great 
future for the much-abused thistle—though 
at present I prefer to take my chances on 
corn. 
Last season our corn was killed by frost 
on the 7th of September; this year’s corn is 
still green and growing rapidly. After try¬ 
ing a great many kinds the last two seasons 
I have come to the conclusion that Angel 
of Midnight, a hardy yellow com that rip¬ 
ens in this latitude, is the best for my soil. 
I cannot get the quantity of feed per acre 
that I can from red-cob ensilage; but the 
quality is far superior. This season’s crop 
bears cobs averaging from 12 to 14 inches 
long, and the grain has a rich, creamy flavor 
that makes it very enticing food. I noticed 
in last year’s silage the yellow corn seemed 
to ripen in the silo during the process of 
curing. 
For information of Southern readers of the 
Rural, who are under the impression that 
we live in a winter climate the year round, 
I may say that our market gardeners have 
been peddling tomatoes round Ottawa for 
the last six weeks at 25 cents per bushel— 
and choice varieties at that. The markets 
are fairly glutted with all kinds of garden 
truck. Melons hardly pay for carrying 
them five miles. We don’t care for the 
competition from the South, for no one 
will buy the big, coarse, Georgia melon, that 
comes in here early in the season, once our 
own finer-flavored melons appear on the 
market. The banana has invaded ns 
though, and tons of it are sold here now. 
Four or five years ago if an Ottawa fruit- 
dealer disposed of a few bunches in a sea¬ 
son he thought he was doing well; now 
everybody buys them and they do not inter¬ 
fere with the sales of local fruits in the 
slightest degree. a. h. 
Ottawa, Ontario. 
CORRESPONDENTS’ VIEWS. 
Corn and Home-Mixed Fertilizers.— 
My experience in raising corn this year 
with only a small amount of chemicals in 
the hill—65 pounds of dissolved bone black; 
20 pounds of muriate of potash and 15 
pounds of sulphate of ammonia—is such 
that for another year I want 10 times as 
much. With these chemicals I put two 
cwt. of plaster, about two cwt. of ground 
bone and six cwt. of black loam thoroughly 
mixed and sifted. Wit h a large spoonful in a 
hill on sod without any manure on the 
land for 12 years, the corn is good, but on 
old ground, which received about 30 loads 
of manure per acre with a spoonful of this 
in the hill, the corn was over five feet high 
by July 12. Who says our experiment sta¬ 
tion does not pay when it gives us such ex¬ 
perience as this? The whole cost of this half 
ton was 84.88. I do not say it is any better 
than any other fertilizer, but look at the 
cost. The articles given by the station cost 
$2.13. I put in the plaster and boDa extra, 
and think I was well-paid. „Beansf[planted 
