Fava Bean Projects

2022-02-09T08:00:00Z

Subarctic Vicia Faba Landrace (61.5°N / Dfc / Zone 5 / Finland)

I’ll update this post with photos of the broad bean landrace that I will be managing.

I was eagerly awaiting for the snow to melt and the ground to thaw, but today (April 5) I wake up to an all out snowstorm… so “Spring” still seems to be at least several weeks away. :frowning:

Though, the never-ending winter has enabled me to go a bit overboard with sourcing different varieties of vicia faba. I count 35 packets in my photo. 12 of which are already traditional landraces from Finland and Sweden (I’m cheating I guess). The others are mostly from Estonia or Poland… as well as some popular european varieties.

The shiny silver packets are from the NordGen gene bank in Sweden ( Search Accessions GRIN-Global ).

I was able to sort through their database and sort “vicia faba” for an “improvement level” “equal to” “300_Traditional Cultivar / Landrace”. Out of the 36 results, I picked 10 from Finland and Sweden, filled out some forms and voilà! they showed up in my mailbox a few days ago.

Had I known it would be so easy to get germplasm from NordGen, I might have been more careful in my selection; but, I basically just picked the varieties that seemed to have some variation in colour.

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2022-02-24T08:00:00Z
Fun project! If you live in a place where it’s possible to trade with folks in the US, I’d love to trade either before or after the season. I live 15° south of you (so the sun-pattern is different) but I think it gets colder here (-35 to -40C) and we also just got a snow yesterday, though it’s popping above freezing every day now. My current fava grex (about a third of which I grew last year and the rest is imported stock selected for variety of size, color, and national origin):

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Wow, that looks great! Also, nice big beans. Might be partially the camera, but they look GIANT.

It is something I was wondering, whether to select/pre-screen for size early on or do that in later years? The traditional cultivars I received have smaller beans vs the improved, modern varieties.

I think I’m okay with mixing in smaller sizes in favour of increased genetic diversity… but I guess I could also select against the extremely small “horse bean” sized seeds (they aren’t technically var. equina but ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ).

But yes, it would be great to trade. It might be difficult between the EU/US as the beans are kind of large/obvious… but maybe it goes unnoticed in the post. I’m not sure of the exact regulations. Otherwise, I’ll probably be back to the US in the next year and could take them along.

Photo: I opened some packets to show the size diversity. From top-left… groups 2, 8, and 9 are traditional landraces. Should have included a ruler, but group 7 was advertised as “extra large” and group 8 is obviously very small… more like pea-size. Group 1 is from Poland and is sprayed with some pink inoculant… also wondering if I should avoid those. Need to do some research!

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Christopher W
Yeah, I mixed up really large culinary favas with really small cover-crop favas figuring my first goal is to mix things up as much as I can and then select for what I want.

I swapped potato onion seeds with a guy in France and that worked out but they’re tiny in comparison. I think I called them “garden samples” or something on the customs form – trying to seem harmless but also not lie.

Matthew P
Great! It’s good to know that you also had small favas included, when I saw that photo I started second guessing myself. But yeah, I’m back to not worrying or micro managing too much…

And I’m all for attempting a transatlantic transfer of some “garden samples” or similar! Should we attempt it after this season? Or if there’s something in that photo you would be particularly interested in, I could send the some of the leftovers now.

Christopher W
Yeah, let’s remember this and do it in the fall.

Greenstorm
Sounds like it was a snow day for everyone. This sounds like a fabulous start with such a broad but still targetted base. I’m going to be giving my favas a bit of a shock as I move somewhere they can overwinter from my current 54.5N: it sounds like you spring plant, are you planning to continue that pattern? Do you know if the ones you obtained are mostly one or the other? How long is your ground thawed each season/do you get much snow/how cold do you get?

I’m especially looking forward to pictures from this project;
@Christopher Weeks
sent me some of his fava mix and it’s entrancing, mine just feels muddy purple/brown so far.

That’s very similar to my climate up here in the north, though we got down to -40C occasionally. I planted favas last year and found they had trouble ripening fully by fall; we have very cool summers here, 20C days and 8C nights, roughly. That’s what’s informing my desire to overwinter them after I move, I’m not gaining more heat, just a longer season. What are your summers like? I’d love to see how everything does for you.

How is your country for seed importation? I’d be happy to send you some of my favas harvested last year in a short season if you think they’ll get through.

Yes! Gardens are so appealing, and landraces at all stages of growth even more so. Noticing differences between individuals is both fun and great practice at honing observation.

Matthew P
Yeah summers here in Finland are very long days with quite a lot of sunshine. And since I’ve been here, not so much rain in high summer (significant drought last year). Though rain is supposed to be typical throughout the year. Last years temps have been getting up into the low 30s, but I think 22C with 12C nights was the typical July in previous years/decades.

So not sure why the favas seem to finish on time here other than slightly longer days (though I think we are only about 7 degrees of latitude apart). Other than that, we had them in pretty good soil so far. The ones we plant in the non-improved ground are much slower. I plan to grow this landrace in mostly unimproved soil so I’m not sure how it will go!

Ground here is still covered with deep snow, so this season will probably be short with a sharp upswing in temperature… so it will be a good (difficult) test for this new landrace project.

Greenstorm
I look forward to following the project. A friend of mine just moved to Finland, he was saying his new place is on a big warm moraine and he’s looking forward to gardening there.

If your summers get into the low 30s and nights above 10C that probably makes a big difference. Plants really are chemical reaction machines, I didn’t understand that as well before I moved somewhere the reactions were just so slow.

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Snow has started to melt here, so in a smaller bed I decided to plant a separate red/purple mix of favas. We’ll see what colours result… but I am thinking the reds could be interesting to have on hand for some food experiments, veggie burgers, falafel, flour, etc


Still waiting a few days to plant the more diverse collection of beans in a lower field.

I planted my more diverse mix of seeds (~35 varieties) at the end of April. I also had soaked them before planting, but only now are the first ones beginning to sprout. We’ve had lots of sun, but I think it still took a long time for the ground to warm up. Hoping that most of them will germinate :crossed_fingers:.

I ended up planting in two different soils. One in an unirrigated “new” field that is mostly clay and one in a more traditional garden bed with better soil.

In #pestpressure news, some small critter (mouse?) has been biting off the tops of my red-purple fava mix. The lil guy doesn’t really consume them, he just brings them over to some rocks (his home?) a few feet away.

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Greenstorm
Mine were unexpectedly planted in sand, that part of my new field must have had some sandy fill put in it. Luckily there’s plenty of organics in there.

Did you plant the same mix in both different soils? Or different mixes in each?

That can be frustrating, is the critter skipping any or taking them all? Are they bitten off high enough for the plant to resprout? I wonder what it’s thinking.

Matthew P
@ Greenstorm Same mix in different soils, so it will be interesting to compare.

The critter hasn’t taken them all and (I think) seems to be skipping some so it ends up being a selection factor. I’m hoping it gives up once they reach a certain size. But yes, they do seem to be resprouting quite quickly, even when bitten off at the base.

The taproot is pretty impressive already. Their drought tolerance will be tested in the newer, unirrigated field.

Greenstorm
Roughly how large is your planting area/how many plants?

Matthew P
A) In the clay-ish field, I planted around 240 seeds.

B) Then there’s a 6m garden bed that was planted with around 70 seeds (35 x 2 rows). Same mix of seeds as in the clay field. [this was kind of a “back-up” in case they struggle in the newer clay field]

C) Finally there are two, wide ~3m garden beds that I planted early on with only red and purple seeds. Here there are about 80 seeds (20 x 4 rows; with radish in the middle rows)

Greenstorm
You’ve got about twice the population I have, I think. That should make a fabulous mix.

I put mine in the ground after a soak awhile ago and covered two of my three beds. The crows came along immediately upon emergence and pulled a bunch of them up from the exposed bed, or if they couldn’t pull them up they pulled the tops off and left the seed in the ground. I can see selection for deeper, sturdier-rooting-before-shooting being a part of this project.

Matthew P
Foreground-left are some of the small beds of the red-purple favas (with radish in between).

Weather has been cool/cloudy so many crops are very slow to develop. But favas doing okay and it seems to be warming up a bit.

My main (more diverse) fava landrace is in a field nearby. They are even slower to develop and maybe only 75% have germinated… likely due to the clay soil and and maybe the cool weather. But some selection is very welcome as I want to continue to plant favas as early as possible each year.

This is one of my favourite individual plants so far… the veins on the leaves are slightly less pronounced so it always stands out. Reminds me more of a house plant:

A lot of growth in the past week. And now some flowers!

This is another photo of my favourite plant (above)… the stalk is much thicker than the other plants and it has a hint of red, so it continues to be an anomaly. Excited to see how it continues to develop.

July 10 update on the same anomaly plant as above (centre-right in photo).

It’s now about 180 cm tall and head and shoulders above the rest of the crop. Still growing too!

The uniqueness of this one plant has distracted me to a large extent (and made me a worse landrace gardener). Instead of paying close observation to the entire crop… I’m usually just checking on how this one plant is doing. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯

Julia D
Charles Darwin wrote a book called Cross and Self Fertilization of Plants that I’m reading right now. He had a plant he called ‘Hero’ that appeared one year randomly. Anyway, your writing about this plant reminds me of the book :slight_smile: I think you’d like it. At least parts of the book are very interesting, if you can get through all the numbers and repitition.
Darwin 2

Matthew P
@Julia D
I really appreciate the reference. The otherwise dry scientific writing becomes more of a dry humour: “The average height of the thirteen self-fertilised grandchildren of Hero is 79 - 76 inches…” And I picture Darwin scrawling H E R O on hundreds of plant id tags.

Of course, I now think of this fava plant as ‘Hero’. It’s still growing, but it seems it (and all the others) stopped setting pods when we had a week of 30 C. So it might not offer 2 full meters of offspring this year, but it still has plenty of decedents closer to its base.

Greenstorm
You’re ahead of mine!

Matthew P
My main planting isn’t so far ahead… a grex of ~35 varieties. These were planted late April, but have been outpaced by a mid-May planting in better soil.

There’s some organic matter on top (from growing potatoes last year) but a lot of clay below that. At the least, they will do some good work on the soil.

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My favas, as you see, were late getting into the ground and even later to come up. Crows ate about half the plants before I covered them. They got very little water. Interestingly, only about 2/3 of the plants bloomed and produced pods. Some, including some big lush pants, didn’t produce flowers at all. I wonder if this is because they didn’t get enough cold/frost after germination?

I did get more seeds than I put into the ground even so. There’s a huge variety and they’re pretty! :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes:

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What a treat to get germplasm from the bank. Can hardly wait to see the grow outs. We love color in favas!


I didn’t post a real wrap-up or summary of my 2022 fava grex, but I’ve really enjoyed cooking them. The colours make rather simple dishes a bit more exciting (here it was squash+favas+tahini sauce).


I’ve also made hummus… in this instance, the colours are probably a bit of a detriment, as it turns a darker beige/grey, but it tastes really good so doesn’t matter too much. I was able to get really smooth hummus without deshelling the favas by ‘over-boiling’ them and then blending them (+tahini, lemon, salt) in a food processor.


Ah yes, and there was also some bad news: previously, I wrote a lot about the particular plant that @julia.dakin referred to as H E R O. A bigger, taller, hardier fava than all the rest…

Long story short, WE ATE H E R O!! My wife didn’t know about my intense love for H E R O and she helped gather some fresh favas for dinner and well, yeah. H E R O tasted great.

There was one pod left on one of H E R O ’ S side shoots, so I have 3-4 seeds that might be enough to save some of the H E R O genetics…

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I hope you manage to do it!

I seem to recall David the Good said he buys “obnoxiously pink” ribbon to tie on to anything he wants saved for seed, in order to make it very clear to all his other family members who harvest from the garden which things are not to be picked.

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I find these so beautiful and I’m sure they are delicious. I just worry about the potential toxicity. Especially when there are so many other plants I could be growing that are never toxic, (or in which poisonous individuals have an obvious taste).

I have thought about growing them to include in my pasture and feed grain legume mix. (I have been collecting seeds for this mix but so far only grown the peas, I’m waiting till I actually have a pasture.)

Were/are you guys worried about the potential toxicity to you or others who haven’t tried them yet? Many people will Favism show no symptoms until they try fava beans. What I’ve read sounds pretty scary, but maybe it’s ok if you just try a little???

Here is the Wikipedia article about Favism: Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency - Wikipedia

From what I understand it is a genetic disease where your body doesn’t produce enough of the enzyme to digest a certain toxin that fava beans have.

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image

Here’s one circumstance where I think I’d also try to give some special treatment to something intended to continue on as part of a landrace. Good luck preserving Hero’s legacy, if that’s the best thing for your favas! They are gorgeous

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I am curious to hear back about this as well. Legume toxicity is unsurprising to me, but I didn’t know this about favas.

I have a process I often follow for foods I haven’t tried before. I usually reserve it for identified wild foods. This process gives my body many chances to whisper, say, or shout “no” before I actually swallow it. If you put cooked fava water on your skin and break out for example, or hold a cooked bean in your mouth and it just feels wrong, it would seem to me they are probably not for you.

Watching the thread

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I was misdiagnosed as having g6pd deficiency as contributing to blood disorder symptoms and told not to eat beans anymore… I was like what? Not eat any more beans? Luckily that misdiagnosis did not last long and I still eat a lot of beans and favas when I can get them around here. If you do suffer from having g6pd deficiency then you should probably talk to your doctor about eating fava beans or not eat them if you feel ill effects. I don’t think it would be life threatening if you eat a little and feel symptoms of low hematocrit like lethargy and extreme tiredness.

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I thought about it, and was cautious the first time I ate them, and I give anyone who eats them with me the 101 on favism and let them make a decision. Ultimately I decided it was more important to me to have a legume that could grow here than it was to avoid the risk (I haven’t had success with any other beans in my cool climate yet). And, turns out I’m fine with them.

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Oh no, what a disaster!!! Was it like accidentally eating your pet cat and then learning about it later? I hope you get those 3-4 seedlings to see what happens next year!

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@julia.dakin I was doing a little research on bean toxicity and found out that, for Pythagoras, eating H E R O was much closer to the equivalent of eating my cat (or worse…) than I thought!

Pythagoras the vegetarian did not only abstain from meat, he didn’t eat beans either. This was because he believed that humans and beans were spawned from the same source, and he conducted a scientific experiment to prove it. He buried a quantity of beans in mud, let them remain there for a few weeks, and then retrieved them. He noted their resemblance to human fetuses, thus convincing himself of the intimate relationship between beans and humans. To eat a bean would therefore be akin to eating human flesh. Equally, to crush, smash, or dirty a bean would be to harm a human. Thus the very strict rule to abstain from beans.
(The Death of Pythagoras | Issue 78 | Philosophy Now)

As far as I know, all beans have some toxins. But they can be safely reduced by soaking/cooking thoroughly.

Fava bean flour is used in things like the French baguette and it is one of the oldest cultivated and most widely consumed crops, so it would seem they are quite safe, but yeah, I think it’s good to determine if you have a hereditary G6PD deficiency.

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Any science experiment that involve burying your test group in mud for a few weeks must be legit. I wonder if he buried the control in dry dirt lol.
I figure that for every good idea there must be a few not good ideas. It seems that Pythagoras was dead serious about ALL his ideas. (Not to make light the demise of Hero, I know well the pains of loosing precious breeding material.)

From what I’ve been reading in this thread, I think trying a very small amount of well cooked fava should be a fairly safe way to determine if one has Favism.

The problem with the alkaloid toxins in legumes is they can require A Lot of boiling and soaking. I found a website that said 5 days for wild lupine, but I’ll have to dig into my books to find an accurate recipe. Over the years we have bred legumes to have less toxins, have toxins easier to remove, and in the case of favas, our own ability to digest a specific toxin at the level and potency it maintains after cooking.

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hello all fava breeders, I did a big mistake with half of my fava seeds this winter : I gave them to my friend marketgardener to mix with his and realized just too late that if he harvests and sells them fresh, I won’t have any seeds ! So we bargained that he will let 10 not harvested for me to keep the seeds and I planted the second half in a dedicated spot, properly labelled . They are doing fine. Maybe not close enough ?

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My first pre-soaked favas went in a couple days ago; more are going in hopefully tomorrow (the radicle is starting to show). We’re going from super cold (right around freezing all April so far) to 25C on the weekend so it’ll be an interesting spring.

I had plans to add a bunch of new varieties to this grex as I did last year but I’ve decided to do a consolidation year. Only about half the plants made seeds last year ( @Joseph_Lofthouse says they won’t if it’s too hot) so I’m hoping to get a better yield this year and to see the results of some mixing. This will be my third year growing the grex here, though last year I did add a lot.

I’m planting in two locations, one is hotter and drier but also was the first soil to thaw (I was planting around frozen chunks in the soil, and areas I couldn’t dig) and the other is level rather than south-facing and somewhat shaded, so it’s cooler.

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