165 
1850. THE CULTIVATOR. 
By means of these drains, I have reclaimed six 
acres of ground, some of which was a shaking quag¬ 
mire, so that it is now good tillable soil. 
Expense .—I make no estimate of expense. The 
price of digging will vary greatly with circumstan¬ 
ces. The price of lumber will vary also with place. 
Suppose the boards to average ten inches in width, 
they will, with the two scantling, make fifty feet of 
lumber, board measure, to the rod. The cut nails 
will cost but little. Nor is the work of laying dif¬ 
ficult—less so, I think, than with any other mate¬ 
rial. The care of wise location, and of faithful and 
judicious construction, will be nearly the same, 
whatever be the material. When the lumber keeps 
wet, as it is likely to do in my case, it may be ex¬ 
pected to last a great many years. My greatest 
trouble is with the meadow moles, which seem to 
choose the soil over the ditches on account of its 
deeper, dryer, and softer character, and because 
their prey is more likely to abound in such a 
locality. 
In a country where lumber is cheap, I think this 
drain could be made more cheaply than any other, 
in permanently wet ground. It will be less liable 
to choke with sand than any other, and less liable 
to incidental injury from cattle, plowing, and the 
stroke of a crowbar, or the subsidence of the soil. 
And should the top-board, by any means be split 
and settle, it could hardly endanger the current of 
the water. 
This drain, as every other, needs to be carefully 
watched at the mouth, lest it should choke with the 
sand, which will always flow down in greater or 
smaller quantities. C. E. G. Utica , March , 1850. 
JSean anfr ea Culture. 
The Culture of Beans. 
Eds. Cultivator —At your suggestion, T give 
you my views of the bean crop, and my mode of cul¬ 
tivating it. 
I appropriate to this crop my light land, either 
of gravel or sandy loam, from which I should not 
expect a full crop of corn; although it may be ad¬ 
vantageously put upon land which will give 35 to 
40 bushels of corn per acre. 
I prepare the ground as for a corn crop ; get the 
surface smooth by harrowing mr otherwise, then 
mark it with a marker, making three or four marks 
at a time. I usually mark two and a-half feet 
apart, but have no doubt they will do well at two 
feet. I then plant with a drill-barrow, following 
the track of the marker, by which I get straight 
lines and uniformity of distance. I plant twelve to 
fourteen quarts of seed to the acre, which I find 
abundant. More would injure the crop, by making 
the plants too thick. I now use Emery’s drill bar- 
row with which the beans may be planted with al¬ 
most perfect uniformity. That machine may be re¬ 
gulated to drop any quantity of seed desired, which 
I determine by trying it upon a smooth piece of 
ground or upon a floor. Three to four beans in a 
foot are enough. 
The time of planting must depend on the locality; 
a frost after the beans are out of the ground destroys 
them. They will ripen in ordinary seasons with me, 
; f planted at any time before the 8th of June; but 
the 20th of May would give a better crop, if they 
escape frost in the spring. 
At the usual time of hoeing the first time, I turn 
my sheep upon them—if there is much grass or 
weeds among them—keeping a pretty strict watch 
upon them, turning them off as soon as they begin 
to take the beans, which they will not do until they 
have despatched the grass and weeds. They should 
not be turned in when very hungry, or they will take 
beans and weeds together for a while. 
As soon as the weeds and grass have made consi¬ 
derable progress again, I again put on the sheep. 
By this time the beans are 6 or 8 inches high. I 
then go through with a double mould-board plow, 
so set as to throw the furrow on both sides well un¬ 
der the rows, or, which is as well, use a cultivator 
with a double share in front, and half shares in 
rear, on each side turning outward. This I have 
found sufficient cultivation. If the weeds come up 
again, I put on the sheep again, after which the, 
beans will so cover the ground as to take care of 
the weeds themselves. 
I let the beans stand until they get so ripe and 
dry that I can pull one day and thresh out the next,, 
and often pull in the forenoon and thresh in the af¬ 
ternoon of the same day, which is better, as I avoid 
the risk of rain, which can hardly fail to injure them 
after pulling. I so divide my force as to thresh as 
I haul in, as they soon grow damp if heaped in the 
barn, and they then cannot be threshed clean with¬ 
out bruising. Care should be taken if they are not 
well dried in the field, to dry them after threshing. 
They should not be threshed in a machine, but with 
a flail. 
A man will pull three-fourths of an acre in a day,, 
and will haul and thresh about the same quantity- 
They are usually ready for harvesting by the mid¬ 
dle of September. Frost does not hurt them after: 
ripe. 
I lay them in heaps as I pull them, as large as a 
bushel basket or less, and in rows far enough apart 
to drive a cart between. 
The cost of the crop is about as follows.- 
Plowing, harrowing, and marking, per acre,...$1 75 
Planting, with horse or man to draw machine, at say, 6 acres 
per day, at twenty-five oents,.... 25 
Plowing or cultivating between rows,..... 3® 
Harvesting, including use of team, say,. 2 50 
Seed,. 50 
Add for contingences 10 per cent.,. 53 
$5 83- 
The feed for the sheep is more than a compensa¬ 
tion for turning them in and out. Light land will 
give from 12 to 25 bushels per acre, depending upon 
the season and fertility of soil. The price of a good 
article is from $1.12-§ to $1.50 per bushel. The 
small round bean, called the “ pea bean ,” is prefer¬ 
red in market. 
If some are not fully ripe at harvesting, they must 
be thoroughly dried, or they will be discolored and 
injure the sample and the price. And ePs it is diffi¬ 
cult to dry them on the ground, from risk of rain,* 
which will be sure to injure them, more or less, I 
thresh them so lightly as to leave the green ones in 
the straw. I take care to save the straw, which I 
feed to cattle. Sheep are fond of the dried pods,, 
but will not eat the straw as well as cattle. If 
harvested as soon as ripe, the straw, if well taken 
care of, will pay one-half the cost of cultivation. 
The bean sends its roots deep in the ground, and 
exhausts the soil less than almost any other crop. 
Through its broad leaf, it draws largely upon the 
atmosphere for its growth. I have found a sensible 
difference in favor of the crops following beans, over 
those following grains. S. Cheever. Bemis Heights, 
Saratoga County, March, 1850. 
The Culture of Peas. 
Eds. Cultivator —In the northern section of our 
country, we consider peas a profitable crop. We 
deem them a highly nutritious food for animals, and 
