Butter Beans

After growing snap beans, lima beans require a bit of an adjustment.  The plants take much longer to mature and flower.  Then, once there are finally bean pods, its a long wait for the beans inside to mature.  New pods are small and flat.  After the pods enlarge to full-size, the beans start to develop.  You can assess the size of the beans by holding the pod up to the light.  At first, the beans will look like tiny flat circles.  It's time to harvest when the pods are fat, there's no space between the beans, and the pod starts to lighten around the edges.

After such a long wait, it seems fair to expect instant gratification from the harvest.  But lima beans have to be taken out of their pods first.  This is tedious work, so put on the tv and get to work.  When I saw the beautiful butter beans our garden produced, I started to forget all about the long wait, the back-breaking work looking for the mature pods, and the hard labor involved in extricating the beans from their pods.   And our fresh limas taste as good as they look.  In fact, the fresh limas are so tasty that now I'm thinking that they may be worth the wait after all.