some kinda good

My grandmother, who was of the Trumbos and Mathiases of West Virginia, grew the lima beans her family brought with them from the mountains. My father’s mother, she was the youngest of six and was happy to have been born in relatively flat, fertile southern Fauquier County, Va. She saved her limas every fall, as a handful of my cousins still do today.

When they started gardening in the 1950s, my mother and father turned from tradition and raised a Burpee climbing variety. They bought “fresh” seed each spring, until the early ’70s, when my mother read in the small, gray pages of Organic Gardening about Dr. Martin’s lima beans. The piece claimed Dr. Martin’s were the best beans anywhere, were hard to find, and were even harder to grow – but they were worth it.

A couple in New Jersey sent my mother her first seeds. Every year, my mother ordered from them. Through the years, they became good friends over the beautiful lime-green legumes, exchanging by mail not only seeds, but newsy letters, growing tips, and photos of the beans.

My mother and I swear Dr. Martin’s ruin you for other lima beans. They are tasty and enormous with a creamy texture. They never get mealy – even when the beans get to two inches long. Because of that, they grow on her farm, where what was nearly an acre of garden has shrunk to a small plot. And they grow in my little city yard, where there is barely enough sun to produce a worthwhile crop.

Mom lost track of the N.J. couple after the Mrs. had a stroke several years ago. Now, with no certain supplier, my mother carefully saves the seeds each year, as I do.

In Virginia, you’ve got to start Dr. Martin’s lima beans indoors well before the last frost. In mid-April, I soak the beans saved from the previous harvest. When they are soft, I tuck them in individual peat pots in the best soil I can find. A tray-full, covered with plastic wrap and settled on a warm heating pad, makes a cozy nursery. Usually I’ll see the burst bean emerge through the soil, surrounding the new leaves, in five to seven days.

After this, the plants need full warm sun or a grow light to produce sturdy stems and the characteristic emerald leaves so eager to climb. The full-size plants can reach 12-15 feet in the garden, so they’ll need strong support and lots of room to grow.

Plant them in the garden before the soil warms and they won’t do much but chill. Plant them in full sun in warm, rich soil, four-to-six feet apart and they’ll take off. Though they prefer tall supports, mine are homemade bamboo trellises that are about seven-feet tall. My mother has rows of permanent wire fences in her garden, devoted solely to her Dr. Martin’s.

Given what they need, the young plants will spend June laying vine and foliage, then the blossoms – and the bees – will come. Dr. Martin’s limas teach patience – the very minimum time I’ve waited to get the first single bean is 90 days from in-ground planting. To get a good mess of them takes four months of full sun, water, and no ground hogs.

Once the pods appear, leave them on the vine until they are heavy and full. Hold them up to the sunlight to check the bean size. But don’t judge Dr. Martin’s by other garden variety limas – let them get much larger. These beans are delicious even when they are one-and-a-half-inches long. Though you can eat them at any size, don’t let them hang until they harden and dry, except the ones you want to save for next year. Unless frost is imminent, I don’t harvest them unless the beans are at least an inch long.

Just as they were more than 30 years ago, Dr. Martin’s lima beans are still difficult to find. The first year I didn’t have my own, I ordered the Pennsylvania heirloom from the Landis Valley Museum. The New York Times reported that they are sometimes offered to members of the Seed Savers Exchange, and by Rohrer Seeds.

Every year when the heat of summer hits – after all the sprouting and the potting and the trellising and the growing – I SWEAR that I’ll never grow these pain-in-the-back beans again. Then, late August comes, with swelling pods and bees on beautiful blossoms and the promise of fall. By mid-October, the weather has turned cool, and I’m harvesting them under a blue sky, maybe shelling them with a friend as the leaves are beginning to put on a show. I cook up a pot, with a little butter and black pepper, and it’s all worth it. They really are that good.

Dr. Martin's lima beans, on the vine

On Sunday, I picked a handful of figs from the tree in my back yard in Fredericksburg, Va. Usually, by this time of year, the figs are little greenish brown stones hanging from the fading tree, so this was a wonderful gift. They didn’t taste luscious like September figs, but they were soft, ripe figs, and they were mine for the picking.

Another beautiful surprise was that the caracalla vine, a tropical beauty that winters unattended in my basement, is still unwinding its fragrant helix blossoms. If you don’t grow one, consider it; it is well worth the effort. The story is that Thomas Jefferson grew it at Monticello.