ctical 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
marke