Wagnabbit: Lima beans came ashore on America’s West Coast

Big juicy lima beans have been on America’s vegetable plate for nearly 160 years. Tasty and plump, these beans were introduced to the New World in the late 1860s, arriving in Santa Barbara, Calif., on a ship from South America.

Local farmer Robert McAlister took 10 pounds of the beans off the incoming vessel when it docked and planted seeds in his garden.

The yield was so successful that ranchers from all over the fertile Oxnard Plain came to see the new bean. McAlister was generous with the seed, and many other plots were sown with equally good results.

Horticulturist Henry Fish began experimenting with lima beans on his ranch in nearby Carpinteria, Calif. The plantings thrived due to the rich soil and foggy summers, and the Henry Fish Seed Company was born.

Fish wrote to several seedsmen who came to examine his beans. In 1908, the W. Atlee Burpee Company (Burpee Seeds) offered the best price.

The company had been formed in 1878 by Washington Atlee Burpee of Philadelphia, Pa. He dropped out of medical school at age 18 to breed and sell farm animals as well as seed products.

By 1888, the family’s Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pa., was transformed into an experimental research station to test and evaluate new varieties of vegetables and flowers as well as produce seeds.

One of Burpee’s most famous items was his lima beans, which he named as Fordhooks.

Atlee Burpee seized on a new retail idea, the mail-order catalog. Light and compact, seeds were perfectly suited for postal deliveries to rural America.

Since most of Atlee Burpee’s customers were farmers rather than home gardeners, he named his catalog “Burpee’s Farm Annual.” Soon, Atlee Burpee was running the world’s fastest-growing mail-order seed company.

He soon extended distribution to include “market gardeners, florists, farmers’ clubs and extension service agents.” Burpee personally wrote most of the copy for his catalogs. Burpee set up an advertising department and offered cash prizes for the best advertisements to promote “Burpee Seeds Grow.”

The 1891 catalog was the first to feature engravings made from photographs, and this changed the whole industry, as hand-drawn illustrations in catalogs disappeared.

In another break with tradition, Burpee printed testimonial letters from growers.

Writing for NPR, journalist D. Cameron Lawrence of Louisville, Ky., said lima beans were on her “childhood list of despised foods – bulbous, starchy and bland…green lumps staring back from the school cafeteria tray.”

Now, as a grown-up, she said: “Limas are…often, the star of a meal. They’re easy to fix with just a bit of olive oil, margarine or butter, salt and pepper. I like their heft as a side dish, meaty little bundles that complement lighter fare.”

“These little beans are nutrition powerhouses, packing protein, fiber, iron, manganese, folate, thiamin, potassium and other nutrients into a modest calorie count, with just a speck of fat and no cholesterol,” Lawrence wrote.

“Fordhooks are large and pale green. Baby limas are not immature Fordhooks but a separate variety that are smaller, less starchy and more delicate tasting.” In fact, baby lima beans are about half the Fordhooks’ size.

“Other varieties come in many shades besides the common cream or green color, including red, purple, brown, black and the speckled ones,” Lawrence said. “Many of these, like the festive Christmas lima, are heirloom varieties. The Christmas bean is cream-colored with maroon mottling and has a flavor reminiscent of chestnuts.”