This is a fast and convenient growing guide for growing Christmas Lima beans. Lima beans are a relatively easy plant to grow. However there are things that can trip up the gardener.
Three Tips For Growing Fantastic Christmas Lima Beans
- Use healthy soil, preferably soil that is black and rich and has been amended with compost. A good healthy soil is substitute for fertilizer if the nutrients are in the compost. To more easily control the quality of your soil we recommend using raised beds. Here is a post about building raised beds.
- Water sufficiently, if you are lucky you can rely on the rain or even an underground spring to water your plants but that is unlikely. Especially during times of drought, water in the early morning hours, avoid watering your plants during the heat of the summer day, especially if the plant looks wilted by the sun. If you see this, Don’t panic! Heat wilt is just mechanism to help the plant conserve water. It should recover after the hot sun has set. One great way that we have discovered to water is to set up an under ground drip system with hose and with this porous hose system.
- Pole or fence your beans. Beans are vines that love to climb, they do not do well on the ground. Use a pole or fence and help your beans get started by fastening them to the pole or fence. I recommend at least a six-foot tall pole or a four-foot tall fence. And to get young beans started you may want to use zip ties or even better these vegetable bands.
- Bonus Tip: save your seeds, don’t eat next years beans, save a few dozen beans so that you can plant next year and not have to spend money again for beans.
In the case where you do want to fertilize use this fertilizer or one like it and its best to fertilize early in the plants life and at a time when the plant is not under stress from heat or bugs. If using synthetic fertilizer, look for a 5-10-10 blend, like this, which indicates that the blend has less nitrogen than phosphorus and potassium. Use 3 to 4 pounds per 100 square feet.
Beans are a great food source and can be delicious. We cook them in a pressure cooker to destroy the lectins for a delicious and extra-healthy option.
Watch Out for Sneaky Caterpillars!
I grow in upstate NY and I have found that caterpillars are my biggest problem in growing lima beans of any sort. Caterpillars overwinter and in the spring when the beans are sprouting. Overnight the caterpillars love to devour my sprouts. This has been a major frustration for us. Once we realized what has happened we had lost 2-3 valueable weeks of growing time, usually in May or June. Here are three tips that I’ve had success with, fighting the dreaded caterpillar.
- Rotatill the garden in the early spring to break up overwintering caterpillar larvae. AFter I do this our chickens and even wild birds often eat the larvae and leave a little compost in exchange.
- Use caterpillar specific insecticide. I know this is unpopular with organic gardeners but sometimes its the only way to get a small tender sprout to survive in May.
- Cover my sprout over night May through June. I’ve used a small plastic cup when my sprouts were very small and covered the sprout all night long. press the cup down in the soil a cm or so. This protected some of the sprouts but it requires the gardener to apply and remove the cup in teh evening and morning. (tedious but effective)
I buy seeds from many online sources I’ve recently been buying from MiGardener, and they are selling Christmas Lima beans here.