Lima Beans As Flat As Pancakes!

[Peanut]

I decided to try my hand at growing some beans for drying this year. I grew Lima o del papa, borlotto lingua di fuoco and cocco bianco haricot, just 3 of each as that was all I had room for and they were a bit of an after thought. They were all sown around the 3rd or 4th week of May.
I harvest them yesterday, I got 88g of haricot and 235g of borlotto, all beautifully formed fat beans and then a miserable 55g of flat as a pancake lima beans.

Two questions, why were the Lima beans such a flat failure, they were all grown together so no difference in treatment or soil and is it worth cooking them or should they just be used as decorative feature somewhere?

Thanks all.

[Mark Rand]

If it's any consolation, I sowed Gigantes beans on the 2nd of May but had a germination failure. the second try were planted out in July. I have some pods but the pods are flat and the blooming things are still blooming (without any bees to pollinate them).

If the remaining seeds are ok next year, I'll try again.

[Vince G]

I decided to try my hand at growing some beans for drying this year. I grew Lima o del papa, borlotto lingua di fuoco and cocco bianco haricot, just 3 of each as that was all I had room for and they were a bit of an after thought. They were all sown around the 3rd or 4th week of May.
I harvest them yesterday, I got 88g of haricot and 235g of borlotto, all beautifully formed fat beans and then a miserable 55g of flat as a pancake lima beans.

Two questions, why were the Lima beans such a flat failure, they were all grown together so no difference in treatment or soil and is it worth cooking them or should they just be used as decorative feature somewhere?

Thanks all.

Hey Peanut, I'm quite pleased to see your Lima O Del Papa beans. I grew these for the first time this year, as couldn't get any butter bean seed.

I imagine that if we had picked some whilst the pods were green yet ripe, we would've found fatter juicier beans, and when we soak the now dried beans for use, they will puff up again to a similar size .

But my nearly dry beans are equally as thin as yours so I think we have both grown them well and this is what they're supposed to look like when dried.

Looking forward to seeing what they taste like now! Will make my chilli con carne a little more decorative at least.

On the downside, my borlotti were a failure, old seed past its "sow by" date, that I took a chance on. Be lucky if I get a couple of chillis out of them though

[ameno]

They're not a failure, that's what many varieties of lima bean are meant to look like when dry. They are wide and flat. They swell up some when soaked.

I would still recommend against growing them, mind you. They are not suited to our climate in Northern Europe. They need hotter summers.
I recommend runner beans for growing as dry beans. They give a much bigger crop than lima or French beans do.

[Peanut]

Oh that's fab news everyone, thank you !

Mark Rand what a shame about your Gigantes, roll on next year eh!

Vince G sorry about your borrloti, old seed is always a gamble isn't it, but one I can never resist! At least our Lima beans are a fabulous success after all!

ameno I've got a rather large jiffy bag full of them so will keep my fingers crossed for another hot summer or three! I always have a problem getting runner beans to dry, even this year. I always leave some on the plants but they simply will not dry, they stay green then go mouldy, no inbetween. Do you have any tips to help with getting them drying?

[Vince G]

They're not a failure, that's what many varieties of lima bean are meant to look like when dry. They are wide and flat. They swell up some when soaked.

I would still recommend against growing them, mind you. They are not suited to our climate in Northern Europe. They need hotter summers.
I recommend runner beans for growing as dry beans. They give a much bigger crop than lima or French beans do.

...but Peanut and I do get hotter summers over here in East Anglia. It's far from Mediterranean, but it's regularly the hottest and sunniest place in the country. Stil got a second crop of figs ripening for example. I'd grow the Lima beans again as they were quite productive from just 4 plants and look very decorative, but always on the lookout for other drying bean novelties.

[Peanut]

...but Peanut and I do get hotter summers over here in East Anglia. It's far from Mediterranean, but it's regularly the hottest and sunniest place in the country. Stil got a second crop of figs ripening for example. I'd grow the Lima beans again as they were quite productive from just 4 plants and look very decorative, but always on the lookout for other drying bean novelties.

And the driest, annoyingly. I couldn't keep up with the watering at all this year.

[ameno]

ameno I've got a rather large jiffy bag full of them so will keep my fingers crossed for another hot summer or three! I always have a problem getting runner beans to dry, even this year. I always leave some on the plants but they simply will not dry, they stay green then go mouldy, no inbetween. Do you have any tips to help with getting them drying?

Are they perhaps late season ones, that you had been leaving with the intention of saving seeds? It might be too late in the year. The plants need to still be alive, and any frost damage will cause them to rot. I grow runner beans solely for drying, and collect them from early September onwards.
That said, I have never had any trouble getting them to dry. I simply leave them on the plant until the pods are brown and the seeds inside rattle. Then I shell them out and lay them out in a tray in a single layer for a week or so to dry further (you shouldn't store them away until they are hard).

Maybe try a variety recommended for drying, like Gigantes (also sold as Spagna Bianco), or Czar? I've also had good results with Enorma.
Although in theory any variety should be fine. I grow a range of different coloured ones. I grow Spagna Bianco (although it is prone to blemished on the bean skin, so I'm thinking of replacing it next year), a hybrid I accidentally bred myself (a cross between Enorma and Spagna Bianco. The seeds are the normal black and purple, but massive in size), a black-seeded variety, and St George, which has cream seeds with brown speckles.

[Peanut]

ameno Thanks. This years runners are scalet emperor and moonlight, I don't know if these are a recommended drying variety. I didn't intend to grow them for drying, I think I saw you mention drying runners on another thread earlier in the year, so thought I'd leave some on the plants and give it a go.
The plants are still green, we haven't been hit by frosts here yet. There are a fair few pods on the plants, but all are green, none are showing any signs of drying.

All the beans I grew specifically for drying dried nicely on the plants so it was easy for me to know when to bring them in, but the runners are being very stubborn in their greeness.
I'll leave the runners out there and hope they start to turn brown and rattle before the frosts arrive, I won't hold my breath though!

Roll on next year!

[ameno]

I intend to actually try Moonlight (or one of the other white-seeded French x Runner crosses) next year instead of Spagna Bianco. I'm hoping the self-pollinating trait will give a more reliable crop, as Spagna Bianco can be iffy in hot, dry weather like we had this year.

As for your beans, as long as the pods have at least reached a stage where they are yellow and floppy then you can still pick them for drying. They are best left to dry more than that on the plant, but if you need to pick them early due to frosts, they will still dry indoors the rest of the way at that stage. They will just need a fair bit longer to fully dry indoors (and maybe a helping hand, like putting them above a radiator).

[Peanut]

Thanks ameno, they've got two chances, dry before the frost hits, or off to the compost with them!

[Vince G]

I intend to actually try Moonlight (or one of the other white-seeded French x Runner crosses) next year instead of Spagna Bianco. I'm hoping the self-pollinating trait will give a more reliable crop, as Spagna Bianco can be iffy in hot, dry weather like we had this year.

As for your beans, as long as the pods have at least reached a stage where they are yellow and floppy then you can still pick them for drying. They are best left to dry more than that on the plant, but if you need to pick them early due to frosts, they will still dry indoors the rest of the way at that stage. They will just need a fair bit longer to fully dry indoors (and maybe a helping hand, like putting them above a radiator).

Spagna were my drying bean of choice last year, essentially butter beans.

Moonlight are my favourite variety of runner bean for eating the pods themselves. As Peanut says, we're dry in East Anglia and I find these generally remain stringless longer than any red flowered variety.

[ameno]

Spagna were my drying bean of choice last year, essentially butter beans.

They had been mine for some years. But I'm getting fed up with how prone they are to this strange pitting of the beans, dark in colour. I'm assuming it's fungal. All of my other varieties get very little of it - maybe 1 in 50 beans affected - but for Spagna Bianco it's more like 1 in 10 or more.

[Trouvere]

I'm rather impressed by those O Del Papa results. That's a more than respectable amount from 4 plants. I've tried before, with that same variety, and I've pretty much got back twice as many beans as I planted, which hardly seems worth it. I'm a bit further north than East Anglia, granted, though I have polytunnel space.

Online information on growing conditions for limas on the face of it doesn't make it seem so forbidding. Generally, there are just warnings about going above 80 Fahrenheit. But I suspect the limiting factor as so often isn't the maximum temperature so much as it is avoiding all low temperatures at night, as well as just our lack of intensity of sunlight so far north.

Lima beans do have a reasonably high rate of outcrossing, though. I'd hope some rounds of crossbreeding between several varieties and landrace selection à la Joseph Lofthouse could make them as reliable as French beans. But that's not a project for me.