Sharon, I don't have experience with that particular variety. But I can think of two possibilities for lack of pollination: 1) hot dry conditions. This would effect larger seeded varieties more than small seeded ones, 2) lack of pollination. There are many insects which pollinate limas. Honey bees are great for this.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Sharon,

I have grown King of the Garden at least twice and found it really doesn't like our scorching hot summer heat. If you can keep it alive through the heat, it produces well in the fall. I get better results from the lima bean varieties that produce smaller beans, just as George noted.

While bees and other flying insects will pollinate the beans, I have found that lima beans don't bloom well enough in the heat of the summer to produce many beans, even when bees are plentiful and other insect-pollinated plants (non-legumes) are producing well. It seems like lima beans have a brief window of opportunity in our climate in which they will bloom well and set well, and I never really expect to harvest many lima beans until October even if I put the seeds in the ground in mid- through late-Spring.

For what it is worth, virtually any variety of bush lima produces much better for me than any variety of pole lima. They also will have trouble blooming and setting beans in the heat of the summer, but since they have a shorter DTM than the pole types, in general, they sometimes give me a summer harvest from a spring planting so that I don't have to wait until fall to harvest any lima beans. In 2011, bush lima beans held on through the horrendous heat until I stopped watering. They withered up and seemed to die. Then, after rain returned in the late summer or early fall, they resprouted from the ground, grew, bloomed and set beans. I didn't get to harvest any until almost November, though, and that was from a May planting.

While lima beans always pop up on the "great for the heat" lists, the reality is that Oklahoma summer heat is too much for them most years, making them great for the autumn 'heat', such as it is, and not great for the summer heat that we have here. I have gotten a mid-summer harvest of lima beans no more often than 1 year out of 3, and only from bush varieties.

Dawn

Thanks, you two - I had kind of wondered (!)
I went out again yesterday, and a few of the pods seem to be swelling, but...if there was inadequate pollination, then there's nothing to swell in the other ones.
I enjoyed the vines, my tepee, etc...I'll have to look for a "butter bean" that's a bush variety if I want to have my own, it sounds like.

Sharon

Sharon,

I have grown Calico Willow Leaf Pole Lima, which has small seed. It has done very well for me. So if you still want a pole variety, you could try that one.

George

Thanks for the idea, George...this pole bean thing started a few years back when I had Butter Bean Soup at a Souper Salad restaurant (when they were still in town). It was very, very good! I couldn't get the recipe from them, but found some online that I thought might work. Just for fun, I thought I'd go ahead and grow them, harvest them and have my very own bowl of soup from them...you see where I've ended up!
I may have to buy butter beans, make the soup and be done with it.
It's a good thing I'm not a "subsistence farmer"...I'd be eating grass :-(

Sharon

Sharon,

I have grown several heirloom types of lima beans from seed purchased from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the two bush types that have produced best for me have been Henderson Bush Bean and Jackson Wonder. The pole type that has produced best in the heat has been Violet's Multicolor Pole Bean. All three of these varieties somehow managed to produce in the dreadful drought of 2011, though they didn't produce until after rain returned in the autumn. I was surprised to find they still had enough life in them to produce anything at all because I stopped watering them in July. In general, lima beans thrive in heat, but not necessarily in Oklahoma heat. In my garden, the ones that produce smaller beans produce better in the hottest weather than the ones that produce great big beans. The ones that produce great big beans do well for me in a cooler, wetter summer, but I haven't had one of those cooler, wetter summers since 2010.

I don't know how subsistence farmers survive, but my dad's family was subsistence farmers about 30 miles from where I now live, and they managed to produce enough to keep themselves fed, even in the Dust Bowl and Great Depression years. If you asked them how they did it, they'd say failure was not an option because if you failed, you did indeed starve. They said they ate lots of corn and pinto beans, because they could grow those even in the bad years, as long as they hand-carried water from the Red River to water the plants during the worst of the heat. Can you imagine? This explains why I am not a subsistence farmer. I'm not gonna carry water from the river (or anyplace else).

They also canned in vast quantities that my mind cannot comprehend (and you know that I do can a lot in good years) because they had 2 adults and 9 kids to feed. I never understood why my dad's family members would eat anything pickled....it didn't matter what it was....if you could pickle it, they would eat it. I was probably 40 years old before I really understood that their love for all things pickled likely dated back to a time when you appreciated having anything you could pickle and preserve for winter because it sure beat starvation.

I don't think we'd starve if we had to rely on only the food we can raise here, but we might get tired of tomatoes, winter squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, jalapenos, tomatoes and lambs quarters. I can grow lambs quarters without even trying. (Ha! Try stopping them from growing. That's the real challenge.) I'd have to become a more well-rounded gardener though, because I tend to only grow the things I like the most and if we actually had to eat only whatever we could grow and what survives the worst weather here, I'd likely have to plant fewer tomato and pepper plants, and lots more of other things.

Dawn

We are not completely strict about eating only what we grow. But, for instance, because of the grasshopper plague this summer, we're going to eat lambsquarters and okra for our green vegetables, this winter. When they run out, green vegies will be a rare treat in our home. So, our good harvest of a couple hundred pounds of Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin is a HUGE blessing for us. Just recently picked about 15 gallons of green tomatoes, which we are enjoying immensely.

George

Oh, George...the plague (!)

I tried to explain to someone how MANY grasshoppers you were vacuuming (daily, for a while)...it's beyond what the mind can comprehend. They've moved on now, yes?
I hate to ask for a really cold winter in the hopes that they would kind of die off a bit, but then I know there's always another "bug" or something to take their place.
So thankful, too, for your pumpkins and tomatoes! My folks (here in OKC also) have told me how wonderfully their tomatoes have been producing the last couple of weeks...I need to stop by and try one - my plants croaked, croaked, croaked and that plot has been cleaned up for a while.
I'm thankful for whatever I can get - always hoping for a bit more :-D

Sharon