Too much stress cannot be laid on the fact that to make money on beans one must have them on the market within a week after the first ones make their appearance.  To do this one must plant them at the right time.  The practical gardener knows that as he sits near the stove with the ground still frozen and a cold March wind blowing he cannot say “I will plant my beans on April 15 or on April 20.”  It is impossible to set a date for planting.  After the ground has been plowed and well tilled he must wait until it is well warmed.  Sometimes it pays to take a chance, but we always wait until the buds appear on the white oak trees.  However there is nothing infallible about this rule, but it is the one we generally follow.

As to kinds we have two wax beans which we have planted for many years:  the Davis, which does well in wet weather, and the Wardwell Kidney, which does well in dry weather.  Every variety of green beans we have ever grown has done well.

Rows three feet apart, with the hills about six inches apart, three or four seed in a hill, might take up too much room on a small scale, but where one uses horses to cultivate, I think it is about right.

Beans should be cultivated at least two or three times a week, and they should be hoed three times during the season.  Never cultivate your beans while the dew is on, as it has a tendency to rust them.

While St. Paul has not offered a very good market for medium and late string beans in the last few years, it is a good plan to have a patch come in about every ten days.  Because you happen to get from $2.50 to $3.50 a bushel for your first beans this year, do not resolve to put the whole farm into beans next year, for they might come three or four days later than your neighbor’s, and your profits might be like ours were one day last summer.  I came to market with forty-eight bushels of beans.  They cost twenty cents for picking.  I sold thirty-two bushels at thirty cents and offered the remaining sixteen bushels at twenty cents, but found no sale for them.  I brought them back home and to my surprise found two extra bushels, making eighteen instead of sixteen bushels.  I concluded that someone had despaired of selling them and perhaps had poor success in trying to give them away and so forced them on me.  However we consider we did well on our beans, as the first two pickings brought from $2.00 to $3.50 per bushel.

Now a few words about sweet corn.  Along about the 6th to the 12th of July the truck gardener should load his first sweet corn.  Sweet corn is of American origin, having been developed from field corn, or maize.  No large vegetable is so generally grown throughout the country, the markets of the cities taking large quantities, and immense areas being grown for canning purposes.

Seed that fails entirely is not often found, but when one has a good strain that produces early corn it is best to save some.