The Time Capsule: Jack (Martin) and the giant lima beanstalk
Tomorrow, April 20, is National Lima Bean Day. Although this is an old holiday that may have roots in an 18th-century English fairy tale, it remains so obscure some readers do not know what they’ve been missing.
How does one celebrate Lima Bean Day? We’re going to kick off the event by starting an indoor sprouting of Dr. Martin’s giant lima beans. These are really, truly, giant beans, beans worthy of both the holiday and the fairy tale. These are beans so large a couple of them cover my palm, so big a dozen make a pot of soup.
Their story is as strange as the fairy tale.
Shortly after we were married, wife and I subscribed to a magazine called Organic Gardening and Farming. We weren’t organic purists, but having a garden and poultry sounded good. One winter day, I opened the latest edition to find an article on Dr. Martin’s lima bean. I learned the late Dr. Martin (1888-1959) had been a dentist who lived in Westtown, Penn. He was an avid gardener and flower enthusiast. He studied and worked with plants, cross pollinating tomatoes and ornamentals. In his garden during the 1920s, he began growing the world’s largest lima bean, which was eventually named for him. The bean was described as being of exceptionally good flavor, eye-popping size, with the sort of sky-high vine a poor English boy would trade his widowed mother’s cow to get. An uncommon variety, they were not (and still are not) sold in seed catalogues. The article concluded with contact info for a couple of small-scale growers who retained the strain. I called them both, but other readers were ahead of me. The few available seeds had been sold.
At the time, I worked for State Police Radio Communications, doing the usual police dispatching. Although my quest for Dr. Martin was not technically an authorized law enforcement function, I turned the wheels of justice to track down a wanted bean. My teletype query to the Westtown PD was answered the following night. The guy who worked the mid shift there was probably as bored as I. His grandmother was in a garden club. The president of that club had known Dr. Martin. He provided her phone number. She was talkative, offering a wonderful perspective on the man, including his disdain for Burpee and other seed companies. She said some had wanted his beans for retail sales. Others thought perhaps Dr. Martin had stumbled upon a technique in genetics — this, remember, was in the 1920s — that could be used to produce other jumbo plant things. Representatives of seed companies began calling. They were not welcome. When he caught a pair of Burpee operatives in his garden pilfering beans, he fired a warning shot, erected a fence, and became reclusive. He had his dental practice and circle of friends, I was told, but refused overtures by commercial enterprises. Dr. Martin went to his grave without revealing how he acquired his enormous bean.
I don’t recall her name, but the lady telling me this had obtained seed while Dr. Martin was living and grew them year after year for her own use. She’d be glad to send me a few. She warned me, though, Dr. Martin’s were not easy to grow. They will not pollinate if the weather is either too hot or too cool. They require at least 100 days. They need plenty of sun and space. She planted hers five feet apart and used tall teepee trellises. I’ve grown them on twine attached to a second story rain gutter and had 20-foot vines. While these were the most productive, they take a tall ladder to pick, so I’ve settled for stripping the side leaves on a sunflower called the Mammoth Russian.
Due to their long growing season, we sprout them inside, transplant in early May, and hope the sunflowers keep ahead. Some would say they’re not worth the effort. Maybe not, but we start them on Lima Bean Day, remember the ogre who would grind our bones to make his bread, a hen that laid golden eggs, and a beanstalk that led to both.
Dr. Martin’s first name was Harold, but his friends called him Jack. And if anyone’s interested, I’ll trade five beans for a decent cow.