Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota Part 31

Growing Beans and Sweet Corn.

P. B. MARIEN, ST. PAUL.

Since it is one thing to grow beans and sweet corn and another to make money on them, I think from a market gardener's point of view my heading should have been "growing beans and sweet corn at a profit."

I will talk of beans first, because while the two are planted at about the same time, beans make their appearance on the market long before sweet corn.

Beans have a nitrogen gathering power and are therefore a soil-improving crop. They are to the gardener what clover is to the farmer. For early beans we have found that sandy soil well fertilized is by far the best.

If possible it should be sloping toward the south, although we have had good success on level land well drained. One should have the best seed possible, and if you get hold of a good strain of seed that produces nice, velvety beans earlier than your neighbor, save as much of that seed as you can. Of course now that the price of seed is $10.00 to $14.00 a bushel one cannot be too particular.

[Ill.u.s.tration: P. B. Marien, St. Paul.]

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 quant.i.ties, 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.

We generally have sweet corn to sell every day from about the middle of July until the first frost. To do this we plant every ten days from about the 20th of April to the 20th of June. Our early variety is the Peep-O'Day, which is planted about the same time as the early beans. We also plant the Golden Bantam at this time. This is followed by Red Cob Cory, Pocahontas and some more Bantam. Then about May 15th to 20th we plant early and late Evergreen, Bantam and Country Gentleman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A load of vegetables at Marien's ready for market.]

Soil well adapted to common field corn will produce good sweet corn, thriving best on well fertilized land. Sandy soil is best for the early varieties.

Sweet corn is often grown in drills, but we prefer the hills three feet apart, as it is easier to get an even stand, and cultivating both ways will push the crop. It should be cultivated shallow and never deep enough to hurt the roots. It is well to hoe it once.

Sweet corn is one of the few vegetables which is quite free from serious injury from either insects or diseases.

Sweet corn may be divided into three cla.s.ses: early, medium and late. It is very important that the various kinds come in as early as possible, as a few days make a lot of difference in price.

So you see that to make a profit on beans and sweet corn, four things are needed: good seed, planting at the right time, in the right kind of soil, and plenty of elbow grease--or hard work.

A member: How far apart do you plant your beans in the row?

Mr. Marien: The rows three feet apart and the hills six inches, putting three or four seeds in a hill.

A Member: Don't you recommend testing your seeds before you plant them?

Mr. Marien: Hardly the bean seeds. I don't remember of ever having found any poor bean seeds.

A Member: I mean seeds generally, corn, etc.?

Mr. Marien: Yes, sir, we do; we always test our seed.

Mr. Goudy: What is your method of harvesting your beans?

Mr. Marien: Well, we generally employ pickers, boys and girls, and we pay them about twenty-five cents a bushel when they are above a dollar and a quarter, and then we keep going down; as the price goes down we go down too; but we have paid as much as thirty cents when the price of beans was high and it is important to get many on the market the next day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harvesting the hay crop at Marien's.]

Mr. Anderson: What are your gross receipts per acre for beans?

Mr. Marien: That is a hard question to answer, as sometimes it is very poor for the medium and late beans, and sometimes there aren't any receipts at all. (Laughter.) But the early beans sometimes go as high as $250.00 an acre.

Mr. Anderson: How late can you plant them and be sure of a crop?

Mr. Marien: We have planted them as late as the 15th of June.

A Member: You mentioned Davis as your first variety. What is the second one?

Mr. Marien: The Wardwell Kidney. We always plant the two varieties at the same time because if we strike a wet season then the Davis does well, and the Wardwell won't do as well in wet weather but will do better in dry weather.

Mrs. Glenzke: Will you tell me the color of your beans? Are they golden wax?

Mr. Marien: Yes, some golden wax and some green string beans. We haven't as good a market for the green ones.

Mrs. Glenzke: Have they a string on the back?

Mr. Marien: Some have and some have not. There is the Bountiful, or the Thousand to One; that is a small green string bean that hasn't any string. But they are very hard to pick; so we don't raise many of them.

Mrs. Glenzke: Have you ever tried Golden Pod?

Mr. Marien: I think that is a wax bean?

Mrs. Glenzke: Yes.

Mr. Marien: Oh, we don't like them, at least not on the St. Paul market, because they are hard to pick. I don't know how it is in the Minneapolis market.

A Member: What is the best of the green kind?

Mr. Marien: We find that the Bountiful is a very good bean; and then there is also the Red Valentine.

A Member: Did you ever grow any Crusset Wax?

Mr. Marien: No, sir, I have not. Of course, there are some kinds that are just the same, but they go under different names in different places. Different catalogs will catalog the same seeds in a different way.