String bean

“ The variety is hardy, yields abundantly, and the young pods are thick, fleshy, and tender in texture. As a string-bean, or for pickling, it is considered one of the best of all varieties, and is recommended for general cultivation. The seeds are comparatively small, and are rarely used either in a green or ripened state. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Navy or Kidney Bean, extensively grown in the United States, over one hundred and fifty varieties of which are in cultivation as a garden vegetable, “string beans,” fodder and for food. The closely related “frijole” is universally grown in Mexico and Spanish American countries where it ranks next to maize as a staple food. Soy Bean, the common bean of China and Japan is grown in immense quantities. Various preparations form a part of the daily food. It is now grown in Europe and southern and southwestern United States as forage and soiling crop. ”

“ Cook the beans in salted water, drain and season while warm with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar. A little onion juice is an improvement. (See French Salad Dressing.)
STRING BEAN SOUP.
Boil one pint of string beans cut in inch lengths, in one pint of veal or celery stock and one pint of water, add a few slices of potatoes, a stalk of tender celery chopped, half a small onion, two or three leaves of summer savory and a clove. When soft rub through a sieve. Put in a saucepan and cook together a tablespoonful of butter, a heaping tablespoonful of flour and a pint of rich milk. ”

“ Cheap seed never pays, for the time lost in replanting seed123 of poor germination, or, worse still, that comes untrue to name, giving one inferior or mongrel vegetables, offsets, many times, the amount saved in money.
String beans are the first form in which this favorite vegetable appears on the table and a very delicious and attractive dish they make when such white wax or golden wax as Wardwell's Kidney, Davis's Kidney Wax, Improved Golden Wax are selected; well grown plants of these varieties, well laden with their long, wax-like pods are a joy to the gardener ”

“ A black spot on the pea indicates that it is too old to be at its best. Beans, shelled and string.—The former embrace the Lima sorts. The Neapolitan or snap is considered best of the String beans. Green Corn comes from the South in May, and the home supply lasts till October. Ears should be well filled and milky, and not too old. ”

“ String Beans for canning are usually taken from the last crop. One quart of seed will plant 100 ft. of drill; or 1 quart of Limas will plant 100 hills.
Limas are the richest of Beans, but they often fail to mature in the northern states. The land should not be very rich in nitrogen (or stable manure) , else the plants will run too much to vine and be too late. Select a fertile sandy or gravelly soil with warm exposure, use some soluble commercial fertilizer to start them off, and give them the [33] best of culture. ”

“ Next came the planting. They helped about this. It was such fun to pat the earth down after the seed had been put in. There were rows and rows of peas, and rows and rows of string-beans and shell-beans, and some corn and turnips and carrots, and, also, a great many tomato plants. Mrs. Owen was going to put up all the peas and beans and tomatoes that Mrs. Horton needed, as well as her jams and jellies.77 And she was going to put up vegetables, fruit, and berries for Mrs. Carter, also, as she had been too busy getting settled to have any time to start a garden this year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a popular tradition that during the flowering of the Bean more cases of lunacy occur than at any other season. In Leap Year, it is a common notion that broad Beans grow the wrong way, i.e., the seed is set in the pods in quite the contrary way to what it is in other years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As an ornamental garden plant the Bean has never received the attention it seems to deserve. A plant of Broad Beans grown singly is quite a stately plant, and the rich scent is an additional attraction to many, though to many others it is too strong, and it has a bad character—"Sleep in a Bean-field all night if you want to have awful dreams or go crazy," is a Leicestershire proverb: [34:3] and the Scarlet Runner (which is also a Bean) is one of the most beautiful climbers we have. ”

“ Instead of spreading themselves out along the entire extent of the bean and so lessening their peril, they mass themselves in hordes in the very tops of the plants as though they had all some passionate taste for rocking in the wind like the baby on the tree-top. This is what gives the gardener his opportunity. He has but to walk along the rows, pinching off the top of each plant, and filling his flat little basket (called, I believe, a trug) with them, and lo, the beans are safe, and produce all the finer and fuller pods as a result of their having been stunted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BAUHINIA.—The leaves of the Bauhinia or Ebony-tree are two-lobed, or twin—a character, which suggested to Plumier the happy idea of naming the genus after the two famous brothers, John and Caspar Bauhin, botanists of the sixteenth century.
BEANS.—Among the ancients, there appears to have been a superstitious aversion to Beans as an article of food, arising from the resemblance of the fruit to a portion of the human body. The Egyptians, among whom the Sacred Bean was an object of actual worship, would not partake of it as food, probably on that account ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”