Lima Bean

Sowing: Lima beans are direct-sown outdoors once the danger of frost has passed and soil has warmed to around 65°F (18°C), since the seedlings are frost tender; seeds are set about an inch deep and spaced four to six inches apart in rows two to three feet apart, and vining types need a trellis, poles, or a teepee installed at planting time to climb.

Siting and care: The plant wants full sun and a moist, organically rich, well-drained soil, though it can tolerate nutritionally poor ground; consistent moisture matters most while the plants are flowering and setting pods, and mulching helps hold that moisture and moderate soil temperature. As a legume it fixes its own nitrogen, so it generally needs little extra fertilizer, and pod production tends to lag during the hottest part of summer.

Lima beans can be affected by mosaic viral disease, bacterial blight, anthracnose, powdery mildew, and white mold, and the foliage is attractive to Mexican bean beetles and Japanese beetles. Young, newly established plants may also need protection from slugs before they toughen up.

Picking: Pods are gathered while still plump and green for fresh shelling beans, generally some ten to twelve weeks after planting, and picking ripe pods promptly encourages the plant to keep flowering; for dry beans the pods are instead left on the plant until they turn brown and brittle.

Storage: Fresh pods keep about five to seven days refrigerated, while shelled beans can be blanched and frozen for several months; properly dried beans stored in an airtight container remain viable for a few years.

Culinary: Immature lima bean seeds are cooked and used much like peas in soups and stews, while mature dried seeds are soaked for about twelve hours and then thoroughly cooked, since raw mature seeds carry hydrocyanic acid that cooking destroys. In North American food history the bean was one of the "three sisters" grown alongside corn and squash, and it became the defining bean of succotash, a corn-and-bean stew that Native American cooks introduced to colonial settlers in the 17th century.

Cultural and historical: Among the Moche culture of Peru (roughly AD 100–800), the lima bean was at one stage restricted from everyday eating and instead used as a status symbol and in ceremonies tied to the warrior class, an elevated role reflected in Moche pottery and art depicting bean warriors.

Cultivated lima beans trace to two separate domestication events in the Americas. An Andean domestication around 2000 BC produced the large-seeded lima type, found today in the wild in northern Peru, while a Mesoamerican domestication around AD 800 produced the smaller-seeded Sieva type distributed from Mexico into Argentina. By around 1300 the crop had spread north of the Rio Grande, and in the 1500s it began to be cultivated in the Old World; the bean's common name comes from Lima, Peru, after shipments of the beans from the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru were exported to the Americas and Europe in crates labeled with that city of origin.