_Kinds._--For convenience in reference and for discussion, beans may
be divided into two general groups--"field" and "garden" beans--which
are by no means distinctly separate either in appearance or in
characteristics. Each of these groups can again be divided into bush
and pole beans. Bush beans of the field type are recognized, for
commercial purposes, under three well-marked types, known as Kidney,
Marrow, and Pea beans, each of which may be subdivided into two groups,
colored and white. The garden beans, like the field beans, may be
divided into bush and pole types; these again into Kidneys and Limas,
the term "Kidney" in this case including all of the common garden beans
whether of one type or another, and this group may again be divided
into wax and green pod. The same subdivision may also be recorded under
pole beans, as is suggested in the following classification:
{Kidney...........{Colored.
{ {White.
{Bush.....{Marrow...........{Colored.
{ { {White.
Field beans.........{ {Pea..............{Colored.
{ {White.
{Pole or corn hill. White or colored.
{Kidney..........{Wax.
{Bush......{Lima {Green pod.
Garden beans........{ {Kidney..........{Wax.
{Pole......{Lima {Green Pod.
{Runner (Scarlet Runner).
_Soil._--While clay loams or soils overlying limestone are most
desirable, sandy and even gravelly loams may be used, but these latter
soils should contain more or less humus and the gravelly soil should
not be too coarse. Beans may be grown on heavy clay soils but the
surface or underground drainage, or both, must be good and special
attention must also be given cultural methods to produce a fine, mellow
seed bed. Muck soils or those with a superabundance of humus are not
suitable as they tend to produce vines at the expense of the seed. It
is also true that this crop will not thrive on low, wet, poorly drained
soils. Beans seem to produce good crops on soils somewhat deficient in
nitrogen when well supplied with potash and phosphorus. Contrary to a
somewhat prevalent notion, beans will not produce well on very poor
soils, but require a fair degree of fertility.
_Seed._--Care should be exercised in the selection of beans for seed.
None but the best hand-picked beans should be used for planting, as the
success of the crop is quite largely dependent on the vitality of the
seed.
_Tilth._--Since the bean is a warm-season crop and can not safely
be planted until after danger from killing frost has passed, the
preparation of the soil for field beans should be deferred until the
vegetation covering the area has made considerable growth, so that
it may be as completely destroyed as possible during the operations
of plowing, harrowing, and fitting the land for the reception of the
seed. The short-season character of the bean crop enables the land
to be occupied during the winter months by some cover crop, such as
wheat or rye, and if the same land is used year after year for the
production of beans, the turning under of winter cover crops furnishes
an important means by which the store of organic matter in the soil
can be maintained, a consideration of great moment in sections chiefly
dependent upon commercial fertilizers as a source for available plant
food.
After the land has attained proper dryness in the spring it should
be plowed from 6 to 8 inches in depth, and immediately compacted and
harrowed, so as to prevent the loss of moisture. The surface of the
seed bed should be made smooth and fine, so that the drill or planter
can be economically used upon it. If dry weather follows at this season
of the year, a good practice is, immediately preceding the planting
of the crop, to run a heavy land roller over the area, particularly
if the planting is done with an ordinary grain drill. If the planting
is done with a planter similar to the ordinary corn planter and the
land has been rolled previously, it is advisable to go over it with
a spike-tooth harrow or some other type of smoothing harrow after
the crop has been planted, in order that the land may not possess a
compacted condition from the substratum to the surface.
_Planting._--Growers have found that it is better to postpone planting
the crop until as late in the season as is practicable and yet be
able to safely harvest the crop before the vines are injured by fall
frost. The late planted crop has the advantage of escaping the most
serious attacks of the bean rust. While there are undoubtedly varieties
which are more or less resistant to this trouble, yet the general
practice of late planting has been found to be of decided advantage.
In planting the field crop the distance between the rows varies from
28 to 36 inches, according to the implements used in harvesting the
crop, 30 inches being a very satisfactory and not an unusual distance
for placing the rows. The seeds are so scattered as to fall from 2 to
4 inches apart in the row. The ideal distance would be undoubtedly 6
inches, if it were possible to obtain a perfect stand of plants at this
distance. For distributing the seed in the row at these distances a
bean planter or a check row corn planter may be set to drop the seeds
in drills. A common practice is to use an ordinary grain drill and
stop a sufficient number of tubes to enable two or three rows of beans
to be planted at the proper distance apart without the necessity of
purchasing a special implement.
_Quantity of Seed._--The quantity required to plant an acre of beans
varies with the size of the beans; that is, a half-bushel of small Pea
beans is sufficient to plant an acre of ground, while a bushel of Red
Kidney beans is hardly sufficient to plant an acre when the seed is
distributed in the ordinary fashion in drills rather than in hills.
In planting beans of the Pea and Marrow types the quantity of seed
varies from one-half to a bushel per acre, depending upon the quality
of the beans and upon the preferences of the planter. For Kidney
beans the quantity varies from a bushel to as much as six pecks per
acre. Ordinarily, with rows 30 inches apart, a bushel is a sufficient
quantity for seeding an acre.
_Depth of Planting._--The depth at which beans should be planted is
determined by the character of the soil and the season of the year at
which they are planted. In heavy, retentive soils planting should be
made comparatively shallow, as the peculiar habit of growth of the
bean is such that it can not readily reach the surface if planted deep
in such soils. Upon light soils and early in the season, planting can
be made quite deep. Three inches is not too deep upon such soils,
but an inch and a half or 2 inches is the maximum depth for planting
upon retentive soils. All things considered, a satisfactory depth for
planting beans is about 1-1/2 inches.
_Cultivation._--Like all other hoe crops field beans require frequent,
shallow cultivation. The stirring of the soil for the purpose of
holding the weeds in check and preserving a soil mulch over the area
occupied by the growing crop, is the important factor to be considered
in culture. At the last cultivation the plants may be slightly hilled;
that is, the soil may be thrown toward the plants with small wings.
This has the advantage of leaving the plants on a slight ridge, which
facilitates the work of harvesting when such work is done by mechanical
means. In the cultivation of beans it is traditional that they should
not be cultivated when the dew is on the vines. This undoubtedly has a
slight foundation for the reason that moisture is a conveyor of spores
of disease and might have a tendency to distribute them more widely
than would be the case if moisture were allowed to dry off the leaves
without being disturbed.
_Harvesting._--For many years the handling of hoe crops, such as field
beans, upon an extensive scale was impossible because of the great
amount of hand labor necessary to gather the crop. Within recent
years, however, labor-saving devices have been invented so that now
the once laborious practice of hand-pulling individual plants can be
done away with by the use of a bean harvester. After the plants are
thrown together by the harvester it is customary for men with ordinary
pitchforks, either 2 or 3 tined, to follow the harvester and place
the beans in small heaps to cure for several days before storing them
in barns or sheds for thrashing. In some instances, where the work is
done upon a very extensive scale and where the loss from shelling is
not considered sufficient to justify the employment of hand labor for
bunching the beans with forks, an ordinary horserake is employed for
the purpose. Where the beans are to remain for a longer period and
to become more thoroughly cured in the field and where the work of
harvesting is done entirely by hand, the crop is frequently placed in
shocks which are built about a pole 4 or 5 feet in height, both ends of
which have been sharpened and one end firmly placed in the ground. A
small quantity of straw, grass, or other material is placed around the
base of the stake, and the beans as they are pulled are piled around
the pole until a compact miniature stack about 4 or 5 feet high is
formed. The curing process in any case is carried far enough to prevent
the vines molding after storing them in the barn prior to thrashing.
If the vines are thoroughly ripened in the field before harvesting,
they can be stored in from two to three days if the weather is
satisfactory. If, however, the vines have some green leaves upon them
and the pods are not thoroughly dry, the period for curing in the field
is of necessity much longer than with thoroughly ripened plants.
_Storage._--After the crop has been properly cured in the field it
is customary to store the beans in barn lofts or in sheds until the
weather has become quite cool before the work of thrashing is done. In
some instances, however, if the beans are thoroughly field cured they
may be thrashed in the field; but ordinarily, in those regions where
beans are extensively grown, weather conditions will not permit of
their being cured and left in the field a sufficient period to enable
the entire work of harvesting and thrashing to be carried on in the
open.
_Care Necessary._--All operations connected with the harvesting and
field management of beans should be done as carefully as possible, in
order to avoid injury to the plants while in the growing condition
and to prevent shelling the beans after they have ripened. Most
varieties of beans shell more or less easily after the pods have become
thoroughly matured. Most extensive growers of beans consider the loss
by shelling resulting from the use of labor-saving machinery of less
money value than the added cost of carrying on all operations by hand
in the most careful way. In other words, the loss from the use of
labor-saving machinery is not sufficient to justify the return to hand
labor in the care and management of the crop.
_Threshing._--Beans are now threshed by a special machine or beaner
which has been instrumental in materially increasing the acreage of
beans grown. These machines are usually introduced into localities
where beans are grown commercially and offered for hire on a plan
similar to that used by grain threshers.
_Cleaning and Grading._--While the farm operations in connection with
the preparation of field beans for market usually cease with the
thrashing of the crop, the cleaning and grading of the product is a
very important item and requires much hand work. Besides the removal of
sticks and straws from the grain by the use of the fan, the beans are
passed through a machine which is provided with a broad, slow-moving
belt placed at such an angle that split beans and peas, dirt, and
stones which are not removed by the fan adhere to the belt and are
thrown out, while the smooth, perfect seeds fall back into another
receptacle and are thus separated from the dirt and broken seeds.
After this the beans are usually subjected to a third operation, which
consists in removing by hand all broken and discolored seeds, as well
as foreign matter, which were not removed in the other operations.
_Garden Beans._--The type as well as the variety of garden bean to be
grown is determined by the purpose for which it is to be used. If it is
to be used as a snap or string bean for early market, quick-maturing
green or wax-podded varieties are selected. If for canning purposes, a
different variety is selected, which may have either green or wax pods,
while as a rule green beans which are required late in the season for
table use belong to the pole type. For early beans, however, the bush
type is the one most commonly used.
_Fertilizers._--While beans are quick-growing and early-maturing
plants requiring an abundance of available plant food in the soil,
yet, because of their family relations, being legumes, they make the
soil better for having been grown upon it. They are nitrogen-gathering
plants, and for this reason require only a small percentage of this
element in any fertilizer used upon them. While heavy applications of
fertilizers containing nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash are used
by truck growers in the production of beans, as a rule such fertilizers
should be relatively richer in phosphoric acid and potash than in
nitrogen. The production of garden beans for snap or string beans,
however, demands a larger percentage of immediately available nitrogen
than does the production of field beans for the dry grain, as in the
former case the crop occupies the land a shorter time and therefore
gives it less opportunity to provide itself with a supply of nitrogen
from the atmosphere. The fertilizer, if used in the form of commercial
fertilizer, may be distributed broadcast over the area occupied by
the crop with a grain drill or a fertilizer distributer, or it may be
scattered along the row at the time the seeds are sown by one of the
many types of seed drill having a fertilizer attachment.
_Planting._--Garden beans, like field beans, may be planted either
in hills or in drills. The customary practice, however, is to plant
the seeds in drills so that they shall fall 2 or 4 inches apart in
rows far enough apart to admit of cultivation with either one or two
horse implements. Because of their peculiar habit of germination--the
elongation of the part between the root and the seed leaves, called
the hypocotyl--the seed leaves or cotyledons are lifted out of the
soil. A large expenditure of energy on the part of the plant is
necessary to accomplish this, and the more compacted the soil and the
deeper the seed is planted the more time and energy are required in
accomplishing this result. It is evident, therefore, that the shallower
the beans can be planted without retarding satisfactory germination,
the better. Upon thoroughly fine and compacted soils the seeds are
planted from 1-1/2 to 2 inches deep. Shallower planting does not as
a rule give as satisfactory germination as planting within the range
above mentioned. While garden beans are planted in extensive areas,
they are, nevertheless, frequently used as a catch crop between other
plants, such as squashes and cucumbers. The bean, being a quick-growing
plant, matures its crop and is out of the way before the entire area is
demanded by the companion crop.
_Harvesting._--From the nature of the product the harvesting of garden
beans for use as string or snap beans must necessarily be done by hand.
Their extensive culture is therefore restricted to areas in which
an abundant labor supply which can be commanded at short notice is
available. After the beans are picked they are carried to a convenient
sorting table, either in the open or under shelter, where they are
looked over, all diseased and broken beans rejected, and the baskets
uniformly filled and shaken down preparatory to covering them for
shipment.