Broad Beans
image credit: Oast House Archive |
Broad Bean 'Super Aquadulce'The broad bean, a legume and member of the vetch and pea family Fabaceae, can be tall or dwarf, but this autumn planting variety is a compact 75cm tall, with long pods containing 8-9 good flavoured beans. Hardy plants, they can be sown from October to November, and then again in February, for early cropping. Autumn sowings are ready from late May.
Broad beans are packed with protein and have an earthy, rich taste. The pods are inedible. The beans that lie within the beautifully soft padded pods can be eaten with their skins on when young. As they mature, they are best cooked and then popped out of their fleshy white skins to reveal a grass green bite of goodness. Sow in double rows 22 cm apart with 15cm between each seed. They may need some support when fully grown. Pests — pinch out the centre of the plant when mature in order to discourage black fly. Mice are also partial to the broad bean, digging them up, sometimes whole rows at a time, for winter sustenance. Not much you can do about this apart from cover the rows with cloches or a breathable membrane—even that doesn’t always deter the little foragers. History — the broad bean has been cultivated in the Middle East and Europe for many thousands of years and has been found in the earliest human settlements in the Middle East (8,000 years ago), Greece and Italy. It is also referred to as fava bean (from the Italian, fava, meaning broad bean) in countries such as the USA. The larger cultivars are used for human consumption, while the smaller, coarser ‘field bean’ is mostly used for animal feed and winter green manure. AB The Organic Gardening Catalogue sells this variety. |
