Sadie's Lima Bean

Phaseolus Lunatas

Story: This lima bean was maintained and grown by Sadie Krieble in Pennsylvania before it came into the stewardship of True Love Seeds, the fantastic grass roots seeds network and company in the USA. We grew this stock in our greenhouse in 2025 but will experiment with different methods in future to see how it can respond to UK growing. Eaten best as a cooked green vegetable, we are really keen to hear back on peoples experience growing and eating this beautiful bean.

When to Sow: April - May indoors. Plant out pot-raised beans in late May and early June.

Requirements: Nutrient rich soil and full sun. They would probably love to grow in a polytunnel indoors.

Harvesting for eating: Harvest whole pods when they are still green for eating fresh and are just starting to change colour or you can leave them to dry to brown on the plant and shell for cooking as a dried bean.

Harvesting for seed saving: Allow seed pods to fully dry on the plant before harvesting as they mature before shelling and drying.

Saving seed from limabeans: Grow these beans like you would for food with plenty of airflow and not letting them dry out as they go, wait till they are fully dried on the plant if possible and harvest them as they ripen to allow for more to form on the plant. Shell and dry these before storing them in a cool dark area.

Number of plants to save seeds from: 5-10 minimum, 10 or more is ideal

Pollination: Mostly self pollinated but can cross in rare circumstances

How to send back seed: Please label all seed with variety, type, date and your contact. If you didn't get a chance to fill out our online data collection form, you can also send us a few lines about how it grew for you/flavour etc. Please aim to send back 1/3 cup of dried seed or more so that we can continue to share with network members. Send to: The Seed Saving Network, Omved Gardens, 1 Townsend Yard, N6 5JF.

Please remember, if you’re an individual grower you can order up to 4 packets of seeds. If you order more than this, you will receive just four packs to begin with. This is to ensure we get plenty of data in return and to keep our stocks sustainable for years to come.* 

*Community groups and Experienced Growers can order larger quantities, please email us at info@seedsaving.network if this is the case.

If an item is out of stock we will send a close alternative.