Broad bean

“ Besides, there is not a doubt that, of our various culinary acquisitions, the broad bean is the earliest in date. Its exceptional dimensions and its pleasant flavour have certainly attracted man’s attention since the most remote times. ”

“ The Broad Beans, of which the Windsor is the common type. These are much grown in the Old World for stock feed, and they are sometimes used for human food. They grow to one strict, central, stiff stalk, to a height of 2-4 or 5 ft., and they are very unlike other kinds of Beans in appearance. In this country, they are very little grown on account of our hot and dry summers. ”

“ It determines whether a plant shall be stocky or straggling, short or long. Greenhouse men speak of spindly plants unduly shaded as "drawn." The ordinary broad, brown bean —Windsor, or Horse, or Spanish—sown in quantity in the vegetable gardens of those parts of the west where the paths of the padres lay— correspond in height quite as much with the light they receive as with richness of soil. If sowed too closely, each plant over-shading its neighbor, they grow in the same length of time to nearly double the height of others solitary. ”

“ A large number of the varieties of both the green-podded and the wax-podded beans are used almost exclusively as snap beans, to be eaten with the pod while tender. The various strains of the Black Wax are the most popular string beans. The pole or running beans are used either green or dried, and the Limas, both tall and dwarf, are well known for their superior flavor either as shelled or dry beans. The old-fashioned Cranberry or Horticultural Lima type (a pole form of Phaseolus vulgaris) is probably the best shell bean, but the trouble of poling makes it unpopular. ”

“ Planted in August, they are excellent until frost; the very best for pickling. For an early shell-bean we recommend the China red-face; the white kidney and numerous other varieties are less certain and productive.
Running Beans are numerous. The true Lima, very large, greenish, when ripe and dry, is the richest bean known; is nearly as good in winter, cooked in the same way, as when shelled green. They are very productive, continuing in blossom till killed by frost. [Pg 63] In warm countries they grow for years, making a tree, or growing like a large grapevine. ”

“ Pole beans are not strictly annuals. In a climate where the winter does not destroy them they bear again the second year, and we believe yet longer. Gov. Pinney, of Liberia, on the African coast, stated in a lecture, speaking of the vegetable productions of that region, that the bean was a permanent vine like the grape, bearing its crops from year to year without replanting. The bush bean is strictly an annual. ”

“ Taking the Crop.—The pods should be gathered for use when the seeds are comparatively young, or when they are of the size of a marrowfat-pea. As a general rule, all vegetables are most tender and delicate when young; and to few [Pg 505] esculents does this truth apply with greater force than to the class of plants to which the English Bean belongs.
Use.—The seeds are used in their green state, cooked and served in the same manner as shelled kidney-beans. The young pods are sometimes, though rarely, used as string-beans. ”

“ The fact that a seed is a variety different from all others is no good reason for retaining or cultivating it; it must, in SOME respects, surpass others now in use, or it only encumbers the garden. What is the use of ten varieties of peas ripening at the same time of one size, and differing from each other in not one assignable particular? When a catalogue enumerates fifty varieties of cabbage, or pea, or bean, are we to believe that each of the fifty has a virtue peculiar to itself? ”

“ I have no root; I have no stem; or, if I have, they never move upward nor downward, as you say. Are you sure you are not mistaken?"
"Why, of course I'm not mistaken," cried the bean. "I feel within myself that I can grow; and I have absorbed so much moisture that I must soon begin."
Just then the bean's coat split from end to end, and for one or two minutes neither the stone nor the bean spoke. The stone was astonished, and the bean was a little frightened. However, he soon recovered his courage.
"There!" said he, showing the two packages he had been carrying; "these are my seed-leaves. ”

“ Frank and Tom brought home opening buds of all 32 kinds, and watched the hedges and trees as they walked daily to school.
Two of the bean seeds were dug up out of the sawdust every second or third day. In this way the boys were able to see exactly how a bean plant grows from seed.
Stages in the Germination of the Runner Bean.
In 1 and 4, inside of seed, growing baby plant is shown.
First the seed swells out; then the skin bursts, and the little plant in between the two masses of plant-food begins to grow.
The root always grows down straight. The little shoot always grows upwards. ”

“ The Climbing French Bean is especially useful for producing crops under glass in spring and autumn, and the plants do well when grown in narrow borders with the vines trained close to the roof-glass by means of wire or string to which the growth readily clings. The general treatment may be much the same as that recommended for the Dwarf varieties, special care being taken with regard to watering and the giving of air. ”

“ Field-Beans.—For general culture there are three varieties of white—small, medium, and large. Of all known beans, we prefer the medium white. The China bean, white with a red face, is an early variety. All ripen nearly at the same time. It cooks almost as soon as a potato, and is good for the table; but it is less productive, and less saleable because not wholly white. For planting among corn, as for a very late crop, this bean is valuable, because it matures in so short a time. Good beans may be raised among corn, without injury to the corn-crop. ”

“ It is one of the earliest of the running varieties. Spring plantings will blossom in about seven weeks, afford pods for the table in eight weeks, green beans in eleven weeks, and ripen in eighty-five-days. Planted later in the season, pods sufficiently large for stringing may be gathered in six weeks, [Pg 489] and the crop will begin to ripen in about seventy days. As a string-bean, the variety may be planted until the first of August.
At the time of harvesting, the ripe seeds are of a bright blood-red color, but change rapidly by age to brownish-red. ”

“ This is the result of my experience in raising beans. Plant the common small white bush bean about the first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go; and again, when the young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. ”

“ Then the bean dries and drops off—that is all that is left of it, for the germ, or heart, has started growing another plant, you see.
"So don't worry, Mab. Your beans are all right, even if they do seem to be growing upside down. That is the only way they know. From on your beans will grow very fast."
And so they did. Daddy Blake told the children that beans are ready to eat sometimes within six weeks after the seeds are planted. The beans are not ripe, of course, and some are green, while others are yellow, or wax beans. Inside the pods, which are almost like peas, are small green beans. ”

“ Presently the bean half sprouted, and the sprout split the stone athwart and rent the footprint of the hero. Gud watered the bean with tears, because there was no rain in that place. So the bean grew and on its stem were the leaves of the maiden-hair tree, and the tendrils by which the bean clambered were the tendrils of the snake-feeder vine, and the flowers that sprang from the nodules of the bean stalk were the flowers of the wormwood tree, but they gave forth the odor of liverworts and were of the color of faded hopes or of stale music. ”

“ Beans were introduced by the Moors into Spain, whence they came to France and later to England. It is possible, however, that they were brought to Britain by the Romans. They are now largely imported from Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and the Netherlands. There are many varieties, as the Mazagan, the Windsor, the long-pod, &c., in gardens, and the horse or tick bean in fields. The soil that best suits is a good strong clay. The seed of the Windsor is fully an inch in diameter; the horse bean is much less, often not much more than half an inch in length and three-eighths of an inch in diameter. ”

“ Leafy branches climb up over the shrubbery, but under these, in the shade, prostrate on the earth, starting out from the base of the main stem, are leafless, colorless branches, forming a network on the surface of the ground. The tiny inconspicuous blossoms borne on these prostrate branches are self-pollinated and push into the leaf mold and soft soil, and there each produces a single large bean closely clothed by a thin filmy pod or husk. These beans which are formed in the earth are about the size of Lima beans. ”

“ It is quite at home on heavy land, but in common with nearly all other vegetables it thrives on a deep sandy loam. Considering the productive nature of the plant and its comparatively brief occupation of the ground, the common Bean must be regarded as one of our most profitable garden crops. Both the Longpod and Windsor classes should be grown. For general work the Longpods are invaluable; they are early, thoroughly hardy, produce heavy crops, and in appearance and flavour satisfy the world at large, as may be proved by appeal to the markets. ”

“ On a Large Scale.—In large field operations, where the [Pg 38] dried bean is the object in view, a clover sod is a favorite location. The ground is enriched by 400 or 500 pounds of complete fertilizer, and the beans are planted with a grain drill, using every fourth tube. The culture is by horse-power, and the vines are pulled by hand or by means of a bean-harvester, and threshed with a flail or grain thresher. These white grocery beans are sold everywhere in large quantities.
Cultivation.—All bean cultivation should be shallow. Nothing is gained by cutting the feeding roots. ”

“ The Red and the White Cranberries, Dutch Caseknife, and many other varieties, have good qualities, but are inferior to those mentioned above. Beans may be forwarded in hotbeds, by planting on sods six inches square, put bottom-up on the hotbed, and covered with fine mould; plant four beans on each sod; when frost is gone, remove the sod in the hill beside the pole, previously set, leave only two pole-beans to grow in a hill; they will always produce more than a greater number. A shrub six feet high, with the branches on, is better than a pole for any running bean ”

“ We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though I value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year? ”

“ The common English field bean, a small brown bean, growing not on a clinging vine, like some varieties of the taller bean, runs in what is called with us the bush form, like our common white bean, upon a slight, upright stalk, two or two and a half feet high, and producing from twenty to forty bushels to the acre. It is valuable as food for animals, especially for horses. ”

“ The leguminous plants remain a longer time in flower, the fitch and the chick-pea more particularly; but the bean is in blossom the longest of them all, for the flower remains on it forty days; not, indeed, that each stalk retains its blossom for all that length of time, but, as the flower goes off in one, it comes on in another. In the bean, too, the crop is not ripe all at once, as is the case with corn; for the pods make their appearance at different times, at the lowest parts first, the blossom mounting upwards by degrees. ”

“ The bean egg changes to a bean plant.
If instead of cooking and eating the bean, we plant it in the ground, or in wet sawdust or blotting paper, it soon hatches out. The shell drops off, the seed-leaves first take in water and swell and then shrink away to nothing as the growing plant eats them up. The little root grows down, the little leaves grow up, the whole plant turns green and begins to climb the bean pole. ”

“ The culture of the Bean, while of the easiest, often proves a failure as far as the first crop is concerned, because of planting the seed before the ground has become warm and dry. No vegetable seed will decay quicker than Beans, and the delay caused by waiting for the soil to become warm and free from excessive moisture will be more than made up by the rapidity of growth when finally they are planted. Beans will grow in most any soil, but the best results may be obtained by having the soil well enriched and in good physical condition. ”

“ Planting.—The common method of handling the Lima bean in the climate of the northern tier of States, outside of the irrigated belt, is to plant from three to five beans in hills 18 to 36 inches apart, with the rows 31⁄2 to 4 feet apart, and after all danger from cold and from insect enemies is past the beans are thinned to about three plants to the hill. As the beans are exceedingly tender, it is necessary to delay planting in the open until about a week or ten days after the time for planting the common garden beans. ”