Quick Reference
When to Start |
As soon as the ground can be worked.
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Crop Rotation |
Avoid following peas or other types of beans
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How To Plant |
Plant seeds 2" deep in rows spaced 2-3' apart
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Spacing and Support |
Start seeds 4" apart. No stakes or supports are needed.
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When to Harvest |
Once you can see the shape of the individual beans inside.
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Storage |
Frozen
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Why Fava beans? (You may also see them referred to as broad beans or horse beans) For one, you can plant them ASAP as they are cold hardy all the way to 20 degrees. During the 14 month New England winter you can look forward to planting something in the dirt as early as March as long as the ground still isn't frozen solid. The other reason is their protein content, especially important for those of us who have switched over to a plant based diet. 1 cup of fava beans has 10g of protein, about as much as you would get from 2 eggs. They are also high in iron and fiber. If you're familiar with lima beans they are very similar, however lima beans are not cold tolerant so for us northern gardeners fava beans are the way to go.
When To Start
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Fava beans are truly one of those "as soon as the soil can be worked" vegetables. Just be careful that the soil is not too damp. Even if the snow has melted and you can flip the dirt over a bit you don't want to plant your seeds in a pile of mud or a puddle. If you can make a ball of dirt in your fist without water squirting out, it's probably good to go.
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Crop Rotation
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Avoid planting fava beans in the same spot that pole beans, peas, or any member of the bean family grew in the previous year.
For you forward thinkers out there, corn does really well when it follows fava beans. This is because beans and peas add nitrogen to the soil as they grow, something corn desperately needs to grow itself. Click here to read about crop rotation and why it is so important It's important to not only avoid planting the same crop in the same spot 2 years in a row, but you also have to avoid plants in the same family as they typically draw on the same nutrients and have issues with the same pests. Click here to learn more about plant families and find a chart showing which ones are related. |
How to Plant
You could fit about 500 carrot seeds inside one of these things
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Direct sow seeds right into the garden ASAP. Seeds should be planted very deep, about 2" below the surface. The seeds are enormous so you pretty much need that whole space to fit them under the dirt.
We plant most of our garden from seed and to speed up the process we have created a little "tool" to help us measure the soil depth. All we did was take an old paint brush and scored a line at 1/4", 1/2", 3/4", 1", and 2". Then you just go down the line where you are going to plant and poke little holes in the soil down to the required depth. |
Spacing and Support
Row of fava beans being planted in March 2019
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The seed package said to space them 4" apart so that is what we did. I have also read 6" apart and in another place that you should thing them to 8". At the time of this writing we have never actually grown fava beans ourselves before so we will update this based on our own experiences this year. We decided to follow the instructions on the package and planted them 4" apart.
Fava beans will grow like little bushes 3-4 feet tall and do not require any support. |
Harvesting
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Harvest when pods are about 5-6" and you can feel the shape of the individual beans inside. Some have found that by pinching back the top of the plant when the pods start to form will result in getting more uniform, higher quality beans. This would make sense as the plant can focus all it's energy on growing it's seeds instead of becoming a taller plant.
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What to do with way too many of them
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Freeze them: Much like frozen peas nobody is going to be organizing a food festival based on frozen fava beans, but they are still great in soups and stir-frys. The trick is to not boil them first, just toss them in right from the freezer bag when you're just about done cooking and they won't be as soggy.
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How Are We Doing?
2019
March 30th - We planted an 11' row of Organic Windsor Fava Beans. Cost was $3.30 for a 2 oz. package of seeds. We used just about the entire package spacing them 4" apart as suggested.
March 30th - We planted an 11' row of Organic Windsor Fava Beans. Cost was $3.30 for a 2 oz. package of seeds. We used just about the entire package spacing them 4" apart as suggested.