I love cold baked beans too, unfortunately they do make me uncomplimentarily olfactoral.

I'm the savage too I guess. I like whole okra pods out of the jar, raw cook pressure canned.

Do you have to tie up the fordhooks in any way? I think I know where to put them next year. When you plant a long row, what is the spacing?

JRinPA wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 3:25 pm Do you have to tie up the fordhooks in any way? I think I know where to put them next year. When you plant a long row, what is the spacing?

I have never had to stake my fordhooks. My long row is anywhere from 30 to 50 foot depending on how many seeds I have. I plant 2 seeds at a time and the next two are 8 inches from the last 2. I thin them out if necessary. But that has been working for me for years now.

I will try that next year, perfect, thanks.

I don't know how the fordhooks grow but my Henderson's Baby Lima plants send out runners but they never grab onto anything. The first time I grew them I thought that the package was mislabeled and that they were pole beans but the runners just grow a bit and stop. I never stake or support them.

My first try at limas ended with some of the same frustrations. I found the climbing types do much better on a very tall trellis rather than poles and I really have to get them in early in order to have a decent crop in Ohio. This year I'm growing Dr. Martin, a giant, late lima developed in PA which seems to be getting very rare these days and with a reputation of being one of the best flavored. It seems they'll put out vegetative growth almost to the middle of August before they start to flower and then the pods start coming on and develop very quickly after that. I wouldn't give up... Just a learning curve. I don't really like store bought limas either, but I love them cooked fresh as shell beans.

Next year hopefully we have a second thread in this Lima Beans forum.

I ̶h̶a̶t̶e̶ love Lima Beans

@JRinPA now that you love Lima Beans you can make things like this succotash with corn, chopped red pepper and spices. I boil the limas in water for a minute or two to pre cook and then sauté them with the corn and chopped red pepper in butter. It's really good.

That is a sliced store bought mango beside the succotash.

20180910_172209 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

We were planning on that this year, had the corn ready... Those limas look good. They don't look like what I used to try to pick out of my frozen vegetables.

I like the Henderson's baby lima beans the best. Ford hooks are a lot more starchy and I don't really care for those.

Fordhook 242's are good limas; but when I grew them, too many were lost to rodents, or rotted due to ground contact. If I grow bush beans, all I'm doing is feeding the next generation of rodents... so with few exceptions, I only grow pole limas now.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Sieva (a.k.a. Carolina). It is a small white lima, with high productivity & a short DTM. It is the only pole lima that I can direct sow in my climate & have a good chance of success. However, many pole limas will succeed here if started as transplants. This year I grew two heirlooms, "1880s Butterbean" and "McClelland Heirloom". The garden where McClelland was grown spent much of the summer waterlogged, so was heavily stunted & only produced 3 pounds of dry seed from a long row (about 40'). The 1880s Butterbean, in 20' of row, produced 4 pounds of dry seed & a lot of frozen shellies. That yield is about typical of most small-seeded pole limas.

The large-seeded ones are less productive... but those are the ones I like best if eaten steamed, with butter & salt. "King of the Garden" can do OK here started as transplants, as can "Christmas". "Dr. Martin" is probably too late to grow here, but I'm itching to try anyway.

I like sieva too, but the bean is a bit small. Alabama blackeyed butter bean is big and productive. Direct sown and grown on wire it does great in my midwest soil.