How long do you soak them for? Are you intentionally pre-sprouting or just trying to saturate them?
I soaked mine in a bucket for 24 hr before planting, but was wondering what others do? Would pre-sprouting be done in a ziploc bag with wet paper towel?
I think someone here mentioned before that if one (pre-)sprouts the seed before direct sowing, it can handle frosts and cold soil (<5 C) better than a seed that hasn’t germinated yet. I’d like to try that as the clay soil here takes forever to warm up (but I haven’t had the courage to try it yet…)
I soak them for a wildly varying amount of time depending on what life is throwing at me. I’ve found that soaking for 8 hours or so, draining, then soaking for an additional hour periodically (soak an hour, cover with damp paper towel 8 hours, soak 1 hour, like that) lets me keep them until the radicle comes out without damaging them due to lack of oxygen etc. I do it mostly to give them a quicker start, and also very slightly to force myself to plant them since they’re starting to sprout and I can’t ignore them. I would be happy to plant them after the initial 8 hour soak but so far haven’t got around to it.
My conditions are so wildly varying spring to spring that I can’t say what it does to emergence timing.
I soaked them last year and it worked well so I’m doing it again this year. Anything that is low-effort, doesn’t require grow lights, and speeds up the process a little is good with me!
@Greenstorm Temperature shouldn’t be the issue with favas. They are very cold hardy and I think our summers should average right about the same. Some years are hotter, but some years it never get’s above +25C and nights are mainly below +10C. Only once about hundred years ago it was +25 in april. Now it’s quite unusually hot with highs just under +20C. Favas are one of the biggest crops here and I think quite a bit futher north. They have been staple crop for long time even when climate was couple degrees colder. Possible that seed source could affect some as always. They are so traditional here that there must be some local adaptions.
Not sure that there is benefit sowing them so early that they would need to tolerate those temps. Usually once it warms up to +10 in may it generally doesn’t go under +5 anymore. Sowing in april would need really warm april and quite warm may for anything to happen. Haven’t tried early plantings with favas, but I have tried other crops and learned that there isn’t that much to be gained growth wise. Lessens the work load later though. One year I remember planting seed potatoes in april and they came up after 6 weeks . Same with carrots sown in early april. Cloth and southern slope could make big difference, but there is no rush with favas. Enough time when sown late may or early june.
I planted my favas in January. They did great with loads of snow on them, and with loads of freeze thaw cycles.
They’re currently six inches tall, so I don’t know if they got much of a head start by sowing them so early. But at least it was nice to see how easily they took all the cold!
If you follow Charles Dowding, you will see that he plants (he transplants allmost all) his favas I think in december in UK. Although they don’t get that cold, they don’t have snow cover to protect either so they do have tolerate some nasty soggy weather. In your case sowing them early might give you advantage, atleast it’s something worth exploring as you will have some days when they will grow. I was just replying to Matthew. Here warm weather comes quite suddenly and there isn’t really spring gardening season, although our early summer could be considered spring by some standards.
Yeah, they have been growing this whole time! Slowly, but growing!
We don’t usually have much of a spring, mostly cool wet winters and hot dry summers, so I figure growing fava beans through the winter is a good idea here.
Seeing how well they did planted in January, I’m thinking it would be even better to plant them in August or September, and then see if I can get them up and flowering in the fall. Having large plants to test for living through the entire winter and then flowering in spring sounds like a good idea, too.
Had to watch his most recent video from two weeks ago to see how his favas look like. They were half a meter tall and had started to flower. At this time of the year it’s daily average of +10C (50F) and colder towards winter so they really don’t need that much to go through atleast. At that stage they don’t need more than a little warmer weather and they will explode.
I was really hoping mine would be at that point by this time of year. If mine end up flowering when it’s too hot to set pods, could they stay alive until fall and start setting pods then?
Either way, I want to experiment with planting them in late summer to see if they’ll flower and set pods in late fall, as well as planting them in early fall to see if they’ll overwinter and set pods in spring.
I have no experience other than what we have had and they do fine atleast until +30C (86F) and little over atleast for sorter periods. At some point it’s probably too hot for most flowers. Might be more effective if they produce before hottest part. From small plant to first ripe pods it only takes maybe 6 weeks, atleast to have some seeds for next year. They taste better if you pick them once they are full size, but seeds aren’t matured. That gives you couple weeks earlier harvest, although they ripen at that point no matter how hot weather I think.
Oh! That seems feasible! I was thinking that they wouldn’t set pods above about 80F, and I was thinking, “Oh, man, it’s probably gonna be 85F every day in four weeks.” Yay, so I should be getting pods this year, then!
Even if I only get enough seeds to plant them again later, that’s sufficient. If I get enough to eat some, too, then yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
A double-cropping trick from Will Bonsall (Maine) that might be fun to try if first crop stalls:
However, I have discovered a trick for getting a later crop with comparatively little disease (in the case of green shell as opposed to dry beans). As soon as the main picking is done and the stalks begin to languish, I clip off all the senescent (old) growth and compost it. Most of the root crowns will be making a second flush of new stalks, which I’m careful not to damage. With any luck, these new sprouts will not flower until temperatures have dropped enough so that they will not abort, and the pest and disease issues should be less pressing then. I may give them a second mulch of coarse compost and a heavy watering. For some reason this is much more successful than simply sowing later; it gives a small, late crop at a time when I would otherwise get none at all, plus the plot is well fertilized for whatever crop may follow.
Also an interesting tidbit:
I have some tiny-seeded, purple-black varieties from Finland and Poland (not currently available for distribution). I find these distasteful for food, but that’s not what they’re meant for. The purple pigment is either tannin or anthocyanin, either of which acts like cellular antifreeze, enabling the seed to germinate in colder soil. (The same applies for purple-skinned field peas.)
Thanks for the explanation! That seems like a good technique (soak/drain/rest/repeat) and it’s super easy even with larger quantities. I will adopt this strategy. The long soaking/immediate planting that I did also works, but I like that this gives them some oxygen and a chance to move toward sprouting… and allows for a flexible schedule, etc.
@JesseI Yeah I really liked your observation in your intro post that Finland does not really have a Spring season . This really helped me make sense of how it differs here from seemingly similar places that one sees on f.ex. YouTube. So for potatoes, even brassicas, spinach, etc it’s better to just take it easy and wait until May at the least.
But with favas, I want to experiment a bit and see what’s possible. Last year, it was already near 90F in mid-June and all the favas stopped setting pods at that point. Maybe there is very little that can be done to cope with an unlikely early heatwave, as it does seem that May sowings pretty much catch up to April sowings… but I gave this years April batch preferential treatment so I’m excited to compare.
Planting thoroughly soaked seeds, so far, seems to be worth it as I had some plants pop up in less than a week. But I will have to see if any find it still too cold to germinate, which is where pre-sprouting would be an option… either way it’s cool to have something in the garden when there is still snow on the ground
I suppose the treshold for spinach and brassicas is quite the same, although they wouldn’t have the problem with too cold. Maybe, atleast in the ground they would be save. I’m not sure how much they can tolerate frosts and looking at weather statistics there has been -10C ground level in mid may. These days you can get quite a good idea when to plant just by looking 10 day forecast. 10 days here makes huge difference and if you have clearly warmer than average forecasted for next 10 days then any cold turn will be lot less than it would be before that 10 day period. I think you could start to think about sowing/planting cold tolerant plants early may if weather is not horrible. Corn I have sown early to mid may once ground seems to stay above +10 and frost are not likely. They take 1-2 weeks to get up depending on the weather so that long they are save from frost. I have had cloth although not for frost, but birds. Rented plot so I can only sow mid may earliest and so frost isn’t that big of a deal once they get up. More heat loving frost tender plants I wait till around 20.5 before I start to even think about planting them, again looking at the 10 day forecast. Frosts are possible first week of june, but usually it would be cooler before that also. Sometimes there are light frosts later, but can’t wait whole summer.
Can’t say for sure, but atleast shorter heat waves don’t stop it from producing. Can’t say we have had +30C for 4 weeks, but some years there are periods when it’s mostly highs of +25-30C (77-86F) for weeks straight or just couple cooler days in between. +30C only last week max although most years it never gets that high. Also depends how cool it’s at night and how dry (or how much water their roots can access). You should have relatively long nights still and I would guess nights get more tolerable. Maybe that helps. Also could plant them so that they get shade. Should work interplanted with corn for example.
I’m also landraceing fava this year thanks to a generous donation of Matthew’s grex form Finland. I soaked, then grew on the beans in modules before planting them. They are coming on nicely. I intend to adapt them to winter sowing by direct seeding the second generation this autumn.
Hello fava beans lovers! I’m the Fava Beans Steward for Going To Seed. You might have sent me your fava bean landrace seeds last autumn. I’m wondering how your fava landrace is doing so far? Are you seeing diversity in your fava crop? (diversity in time to sprout, height, width of stock, color of stock, time to flower, color of flowers…) I’ve just checked mine and I’m super thrilled with the diversity I see in all those categories. The most spectacular is the flower colors. I’m joining some photos below. What about you? Would there be any interest in doing a zoom meeting to get to know each others and share/talk about our different fava landraces
Thanks for sharing! My 4th photo is actually not my common fava flower here. My most common fava flower is all while with just a black dot. On my 4th one, the whole little ear of the flower (sorry don’t have the word in English for that part of the flower) is entirely black which I find so beautiful actually. This is my first year seeing those.
. Same with carrots sown in early april. Cloth and southern slope could make big difference, but there is no rush with favas. Enough time when sown late may or early june.
. This really helped me make sense of how it differs here from seemingly similar places that one sees on f.ex. YouTube. So for potatoes, even brassicas, spinach, etc it’s better to just take it easy and wait until May at the least.
pop up in less than a week. But I will have to see if any find it still too cold to germinate, which is where pre-sprouting would be an option… either way it’s cool to have something in the garden when there is still snow on the ground 
