Lima Bean seeds
Growing the Best Lima Bean Seeds
- Handpicked for superior germination and vigorous growth.
- Easy to grow, perfect for beginner and seasoned gardeners.
- Tested for quality and trusted by gardeners nationwide.
Regular price
From $16.99 USD
Sale price
From $16.99 USD
Regular price
Regular price
From $16.99 USD
Sale price
From $16.99 USD
Regular price
Grow the Creamiest, Richest Butter Beans You've Ever Tasted with Lima Bean Seeds
Okay, let's address the elephant in the room. Lima beans get a bad rap. Somewhere between school cafeteria lunches and those sad gray-green things from a can, a whole generation decided they didn't like limas. And honestly? Fair. Because canned lima beans and homegrown lima beans are two completely different foods. It's not even close. A fresh lima bean picked right off the plant — still warm from the sun, tender, buttery, with this subtle sweetness that no processing plant can preserve — that's a totally different experience. It'll change your mind. I've seen it happen a hundred times.
At SeedOrganica, our lima bean seeds are fresh stock, quality tested, and picked specifically for home gardeners and kitchen garden growers who want to taste the real deal. Whether you call em limas, butter beans, or — if you're from certain parts of the South — just "buttah beans," these are one of the most rewarding warm-season crops you can grow in a backyard plot or even a couple of big containers on a sunny deck. Easy to grow, generous producers, and absolutely delicious when you harvest them fresh. Store-bought doesn't stand a chance.
Explore Our Lima Bean Seeds Varieties
When you start looking for lima bean seeds for sale, you'll quickly notice there's way more variety than just "big" and "small." The lima bean world has some genuinely interesting options, and picking the right variety for your garden setup and your kitchen makes all the difference.
Fordhook 242 is probably the most popular bush lima in America, and for good reason. Big, plump, pale green beans with that classic creamy butter bean texture everybody loves. It's a bush type, so it stays compact — no trellising needed — and it handles heat better than a lot of other varieties. If you've never grown limas before, Fordhook is a rock-solid starting point. It's basically the golden retriever of lima beans. Reliable, friendly, hard to mess up.
Henderson Bush is the baby lima — smaller beans, but don't let the size fool you. These little guys are tender and sweet with a more delicate flavor than the big limas. They also mature faster, which is great if your growing season is on the shorter side. Henderson is incredibly productive too. A few plants will keep you in baby limas all summer long. They're perfect for soups, succotash, and honestly just sautéed with a little garlic and butter. Simple and perfect.
King of the Garden is the big daddy — a pole variety that climbs 6 to 8 feet and produces absolutely massive beans. These are the ones you want if you've got vertical space and you like your limas large and in charge. The flavor is rich, starchy in the best possible way, and they're incredible in hearty stews and casseroles. You'll need a trellis or some sturdy poles, but the yield per square foot is amazing because you're growing up instead of out. Great for smaller garden footprints where you want to maximize production.
Christmas Lima — also called speckled butter bean or chestnut lima — is the fun one. These beans are gorgeous. Creamy white with deep maroon streaks and speckles that look like someone hand-painted them. And the flavor? Richer and almost chestnut-like compared to regular limas. Slightly nutty. They're a pole variety and a genuine heirloom that's been passed down through gardens for generations. If you want something that looks beautiful in the garden AND on the plate, Christmas limas are it.
Jackson Wonder is another speckled beauty — a bush type this time, with smaller brownish-purple spotted beans that are drought-tolerant and crazy productive in hot climates. If you're gardening in the deep South or anywhere that gets scorching summers, Jackson Wonder might be your best bet. It shrugs off heat that would stress other varieties. The flavor's great too — earthy and hearty with a firmer texture that holds up well in slow-cooked dishes.
Growing a mix of bush and pole types, baby and large varieties, gives you this awesome range in the kitchen and extends your harvest window since different varieties mature at different rates. That's the magic of growing from seed — you get to experiment and find your favorites.
Gardening Insights: How to Grow Lima Beans from Seed
Lima beans are warm-season crops through and through. They don't mess around with cold soil — they want warmth, and they want it before they'll even consider sprouting. But once conditions are right, they're one of the easiest and most productive things you can grow in a home garden. Here's the rundown.
Timing — Don't Rush It: This is the number one mistake people make with limas. They get excited in early spring, toss the seeds in cold ground, and wonder why nothing happens. Lima beans need soil temperatures of at least 65°F to germinate, and they really prefer 70°F or above. In most parts of the country, that means waiting until 2 to 3 weeks after your last frost date. I know it's tempting to get a head start, but cold wet soil will just rot the seeds. Trust me on this one. Patience pays off. If you're itching to plant early, stick a soil thermometer in the ground and let it tell you when it's actually go time.
Sunlight: Full sun, no exceptions. Lima beans want 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight every day, and more is better. They're sun worshippers. A spot that gets strong afternoon light is ideal. Shady conditions lead to leggy plants, poor flowering, and disappointing harvests. Give em the sunniest real estate in your garden and they'll reward you with pods all summer long.
Soil: Loose, well-draining soil with decent organic matter is the sweet spot. Lima beans — like all legumes — are nitrogen fixers, meaning they actually improve your soil by pulling nitrogen from the air and storing it in nodules on their roots. Pretty cool, right? So they don't need heavy nitrogen fertilization. In fact, too much nitrogen gives you beautiful leafy plants with barely any beans. Not what we want. A balanced garden compost worked into the soil before planting is usually all they need. They prefer a slightly acidic to neutral pH — somewhere around 6.0 to 6.8 is ideal.
Watering: Consistent moisture is important, especially once the plants start flowering and setting pods. Dry stress during bloom time can cause flowers to drop without producing beans, which is super frustrating. About an inch of water per week is a good target — more during hot dry spells. Water at the base of the plants rather than overhead if you can. Wet foliage can invite fungal problems. Drip irrigation or a soaker hose works great. Mulching around the base of plants with straw or shredded leaves helps hold moisture in and keep roots cooler on those really scorching days.
Spacing and Support: Bush varieties can be planted about 4 to 6 inches apart in rows spaced 2 to 3 feet apart. They'll stay compact and self-supporting. Pole varieties need something to climb — a trellis, teepee of bamboo poles, or even a sturdy fence works great. Plant pole limas about 6 to 8 inches apart at the base of your support structure. The vines will grab on and climb on their own once they get going. Pole types take a little longer to start producing but keep going longer into the season than bush types.
Harvesting: Here's where it gets fun. You can harvest limas at different stages depending on how you want to use them. For fresh "green" limas — that classic tender butter bean — pick the pods when they're plump and the beans inside are visible through the pod but the pod is still green. For dry limas (great for storage and winter soups), leave the pods on the plant until they turn brown and papery, then harvest and shell. Most bush varieties are ready to start picking about 65 to 75 days after planting. Pole varieties usually take 80 to 90 days. Keep picking regularly and the plant keeps producing — let the pods sit too long and production slows down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I grow lima beans in containers?
For sure, especially the bush varieties. Henderson Bush and Fordhook 242 both do great in pots. Use a container that's at least 12 inches deep and 12 inches wide — bigger is better — with solid drainage holes in the bottom. A 5-gallon bucket with holes drilled in it honestly works fantastic if you're going the budget route. Fill it with a good quality potting mix, put it in your sunniest spot, and you're in business. You can fit 3 to 4 bush lima plants per large container. Pole varieties are trickier in containers but doable if you've got a big enough pot and a sturdy trellis or obelisk to give them something to climb. Just stay on top of watering since containers dry out faster than garden beds, especially in midsummer heat.
When should I plant lima bean seeds?
Wait until your soil is consistently warm — 65°F minimum, 70°F or warmer is better. For most of the US, that means late May through June. In the deep South and warmer coastal areas, you can sometimes get away with early May or even a second planting in late July for a fall harvest. Northern gardeners in zones 4 and 5 should wait until early to mid June to be safe. Lima beans are directly sown — you don't typically start them indoors because they don't love having their roots disturbed during transplanting. Plant seeds about 1 to 1.5 inches deep, and you should see sprouts poking through in 7 to 14 days if the soil is warm enough. If it's been two weeks and nothing's happening, the ground was probably too cold and the seeds may have rotted. Try again when it warms up more.
What's the difference between lima beans and butter beans?
Same plant, different name — it's basically a regional thing. In the northern and mid-Atlantic US, people tend to say "lima beans." In the South, they're almost universally called "butter beans." There's sometimes a loose distinction where larger, starchier varieties get called limas and smaller, more tender ones get called butter beans, but botanically they're all Phaseolus lunatus. The name "lima" comes from Lima, Peru, where the bean was first documented by European explorers. The name "butter bean" comes from... well, eat one and you'll figure it out real quick. They're buttery. Either way, same delicious bean. Call em whatever you want — just grow em.
How do I cook fresh lima beans from the garden?
Fresh limas are ridiculously simple to cook and they taste worlds apart from anything canned or frozen. Shell them out of the pods, give em a quick rinse, and simmer in salted water or broth for about 20 to 30 minutes until they're tender. That's it. Drain, toss with butter, a crack of black pepper, maybe a squeeze of lemon — done. Want to get fancier? Sauté them with bacon, onion, and a little cream for a Southern-style butter bean side that'll disappear from the table before anything else. They're also amazing in succotash with fresh corn, in soups and stews, mashed up with garlic as a dip, or tossed into pasta with cherry tomatoes and fresh herbs. Christmas limas are especially gorgeous on a plate — those speckled patterns hold up even after cooking and look like something from a food magazine. The bottom line is: fresh homegrown limas basically cook themselves. You don't need to do much to make them taste incredible.
Do lima beans fix nitrogen in the soil?
They sure do, and this is honestly one of the coolest things about growing any legume in your garden. Lima bean roots form a partnership with naturally occurring soil bacteria called rhizobia. These bacteria colonize little nodules on the roots and convert atmospheric nitrogen — which plants can't use directly — into a form the plant can absorb. The plant feeds the bacteria sugars, the bacteria feed the plant nitrogen. Everybody wins. And here's the bonus: when the lima bean plants are done for the season, if you chop them off at soil level and leave the roots in place, all that stored nitrogen gets released into the soil as the roots decompose. It's basically free fertilizer for whatever you plant in that spot next. Heavy feeders like tomatoes, corn, or squash planted after limas get a nice nitrogen boost without you adding a thing. That's smart crop rotation right there — old school gardening wisdom that still works perfectly today.
