Hawaiian Landrace Limas

Just harvested my first beans from the Hawaiian landrace lima bean vines. As you may recall, I planted 11 beans in one of the greenhouses. That was way back on July 7th. Some seeds didn't germinate because they were old, so I ended up with 6 robust plants.

Those 6 plants took ever the entire 10' by 20' greenhouse. You talk about being an aggressive vine! I could have been more attentive and trained the vines better, but after harvesting the other limas on the left hand side of the greenhouse, I took the lazy approach and let the Hawaiian limas on the righthand side just cross over the ceiling and take over the lefthand side as well. 

So it took 6 1/2 months before the first pods dried down for harvest. Wow, that's a heck of a long time.

The pods I harvested contained 2 to 3 beans. 

In addition, this variety to big on growing leaves and vine, but very skimpy on producing pods. There's not many pods on these monster sized plants, at least not what one would expect as compared to other lima varieties. 

But the variety is unique. The lima beans are very interesting to look at. Large. Not all that plump. Longer than wide. Beautifully marked with black and white. It's the color and markings that I find intriguing. 

So pretty! 

If I were growing this to be a staple crop, I'd need to grow acres of them because of the poor yield. Other limas are far more productive. But I still like this variety. I think that I'll continue to grow it. It will be a novelty crop, rather than a staple. 

Lima Beans - Not a Complete Failure

I'm finally getting some lima beans, so this experiment hasn't been a complete failure. The vines started out growing well and looking great. Then they flowered quite heavily and started producing little pods, but they all aborted or were empty. No lima beans. Then the rains stopped. For five weeks the farm saw very, very little rain. 

I had already lost interest in the limas by the time the rain stopped. I never gave them a thought. But after a couple weeks I did notice that the vines looked dry and started dropping leaves. Why waste good water on non-producing vines, I thought to myself. Plus, a friend gratefully gave me a few dozen fresh beans so that I could plant them down at the seed farm, where I hoped they would do better. 

By the end of the dry five weeks, the plants looked pathetic, mere shadows of their former lush selves......

Then the rains returned and the vines started sprouting fresh growth. 

Today I finally got around to those vines. I figured I'd cut them way back and let them regrow and see what happens. Would the vines continue to live? Or since it is wintertime, would they die off? 

Surprise! I found some pods....with beans! Not many, about four dozen pods. But they definitely have beans in them, ranging from 1 to 3 per pod. 

Carefully opening up one, I discovered a mature limas. Wow! 

Soooo, limas will indeed grow here. But obviously I've got problems. Now I need to figure things out and find out how to actually grow these buggahs. 

Questions to mull over...

,..was there too much rain? 

...do they need dry to set pods?

...did a pollinator move in during the dry spell? 

...was there too much lush growth? 

...is the soil fertility off? 

...was the lack of daily sunshine a factor? 

...the tradewinds had returned. Was that a factor affecting pollination? 

...was stressing the plants a factor? 

...am I missing something? 

Where Are My Limas?

Remember those robust Lima bean vines? Well, they're green and vigorous, filling out the trellis fence. For weeks they've been pushing one wave of blooms after the other. Flowers are followed by many immature twisting pods that grow to 2"-3" then fall off. What gives? 

I haven't fertilized the vines since the initial soil prep. Since the vines were growing well and looked a nice green, I choose not to add fertilizer. The only thing I've done is mulch them with rather stemy grass clippings. So I don't think that too much nitrogen is the problem. We've had enough rain that should have leeched out excess nitrogen. 

I've been looking for signs of disease and pests. No mildew yet. The leaves and stems seem to be fine. I'm not ready to dig up the plants just check the roots. I know that I have rootknot nematode here, but the plants look too vigorous for that to be the cause. 

Pollination problem? Perhaps. I was under the impression that limas are self pollinating, but is that true for this variety? Don't know. More basic, are the plants producing viable pollen? Don't know that either. But I can say that I haven't seen any bees visiting the flowers. The hive is less than 50' away and the girls are ignoring the lima vines.  

Is this normal for this variety? I discovered that fava beans produced lots of flowers for weeks before they started producing flowers that set pods. Could this be the same situation for this lima variety? Could there be a minimum age factor? 

(Pods are growing longer before they abort now.)

Or could there be an environmental trigger that's missing. It's been fairly wet this year with not much strong sun. We've had hot days (hot for me is over 83° F) but not consistently hot. What is it that limas need to trigger pod production? 

Perhaps a soil nutrient deficiency? If things don't happen soon, maybe I'll send off a soil sample. 

I don't know of any local gardeners growing this lima under conditions similar to what I have on this farm. So I'm sadly lacking advice from successful lima growers. I guess I'll just have to keep experimenting and see what comes.