I would have planted a looong time ago. I plant the day I see the soil surface under the snow for the first time. I think you shall plant asap and don’t worry about possible frost. They can survive a lot. In my case, they came back from -22C/-7F and resumed growth! -28C/-14F took them for good. (Fall cover crop in baby stages)
You have warmer next week than I have at any point in the peak of my summer (day temps) and your nights are no problem whatsoever for favas.
Alright, I’ve got them soaking in very cold rainwater now and will plant them right before dark today. Hopefully a few of these will produce before it gets too hot. I may be able to return a selection of faster producers in warmer environment strains.
For the space needed to produce a harvest worthwhile, beans didn’t make it on the list of priorities for the warm season. However, these fava beans are very interesting to me because I do like beans and do not have a lot of cold season options that I actually like to eat. Just last week, I tore into dozens of kale and mustard plants, trying to terminate them and prepare the bed for something else. I picked a few of those leaves and decided not to even bring them inside to cook.
Please test Bare Necessities (napus)!
My experience is that they taste great even while bolting. I’ve never had kale plants before testing that population that I liked to eat while bolting (in my climate, that often means “stressed”).
I looked into it it. I might order and try this fall, thanks.
This is a current look of the GTS 2024 fava beans in my garden. They seem to be growing fast and healthy.
They don’t yet know what mess they are in yet. But they will soon enough. I just got through with the audiobook of “The Old Man and the Sea.” A quote in there reminds me of this situation: “The punishment of the hook is nothing. The punishment of hunger, and that he is against something he does not comprehend.”
I planted my 2024 GTS favas yesterday, here on the warm end of zone 6b Kentucky. Local wisdom is to plant peas on Valentine’s Day, so I know I’m running late with these favas, but I would like to hope there is time. I think you and I may be in a similar situation Austin in terms of schedule.
I planted my favas Saturday. May need to water them this coming weekend. I planted one patch of OSSI pledged Montana Rainbow Fava which is Lofthouse, Frog Island Nation, Early Windsor from Garden City Seeds, Windsor, and Ianto’s Return.
I planted a second patch of my newer grex which I am thinking of as Montana Rainbow Fava 2.0. It has everything that Montana Rainbow has plus additional packets a few years ago of Brown Speckled, Fingerprint, Andean Mix, and new additions of Crimson Fava from Wild Dream Farms and San Luis Fava from Native Seed Search.
It was a very early spring here, so after a month passed with no visible seedlings I thought my favas had been eaten by rabbits or deer. Or maybe voles, even before sprouting.
Last week I spotted a few small plants. I thought maybe they regrew from roots. This week, I see lots more popping up. I now wonder: maybe the favas took five or six weeks to germinate even when temperatures have regularly been above 65 degrees Fahrenheit throughout that time.
Interesting! I wonder if there is still hope of producing beans this season.
Weird! They came up fast here. I don’t remember exactly but I think most within a week when planted in damp soil before rain without a presoak. Though I’ve certainly had seed I had every reason to have great confidence in come up late or never.
I hope so! I’m not sure whether favas are like potatoes or runner beans and will drop flowers or immature fruits in the heat, or if anything that manages to survive and set might work it out. Based on what I’ve seen so far I have a lot of faith in the possibilities of this mix
My Montana Rainbow Fava OSSI grex and Montana Rainbow 2 grexes are both up and growing. Enough of them fended off the Hungarian partridge that were trying to eat them as they germinated I guess!
My fava beans are flowering now!
I planted them outside in January. They’re about six inches tall. I haven’t yet seen a fava bean plant get ginormous for me; I suspect they’re only going to get huge if they’re grown through a cool summer, and what I have to offer them is a warm winter. But they’re flowering and looking healthy and happy, so it’s all good! 
Hope they set well 
Mine are too!
After hearing on the forum how much voles seem to like favas and seeing first hand how they decimated our peas last year, I decided my plans needed adjusting. I planted most of the GTS favas far away from the center of Vole City, quite a few in containers. Four of the favas I liked the best went in a polyculture container. The rest of the preferred ones went in a shaded polyculture under a mature tree, next to a Nanking cherry. The rest went in another container
There’s something really magical about growing them 
Wow, yours are so tall!
I’ve been growing mine in full sun. Do they seem to like partial (or full) shade better?
I couldn’t say with confidence. A lot of the English language internet seems to think they need full sun or close to it. This I can at least say doesn’t seem to be correct, and I had experience growing favas in shade last year. I suspect they might be a little less leggy and a little snappier flowering if they got more sun, but so far so good. They do seem very happy.
This seemed like one of the more conservative places to put them as it’s one of the areas with least vole traffic
I’m in a cold climate, but FWIW, I’ve had favas take 5-6 weeks to pop up (and also a similar wait for some direct sown squash last year). I have clay soil which can stay surprisingly cool/insulated just below the surface, despite long hours of direct sun, etc.
It’s not necessarily desirable, but it is cool to realise that you have hearty seeds that can camp out underground for over a month.
Hmmm. It’s an interesting question. Most “full sun” plants that aren’t super drought tolerant seem to prefer partial shade in my climate. (Which is why I’ve planted apple trees on the west side of my garden.)
If I put them in partial shade or even full shade, they’ll probably grow slower but stay cooler and therefore be more able to set pods during my hot summers.
On the other hand, “very happy to grow through the winter” is the growth pattern I’m hoping to get from them. Winter offers the opposite growing conditions from summer: very little sun, lots of cold air, and lots of water. Plus there are a lot of spaces that are in full sun in winter and in full shade in summer, due to deciduous trees losing their leaves.
Yeah, I think I probably want to keep my favas in full sun so that they can grow faster during a cold time of year that doesn’t have a lot of sun in the first place. I want to adapt them to my winters, not my summers. Who cares if they’re heat tolerant, as long as they’ll grow through the winter for me?
Hallo fellow Fava growers!
I would like to share with you my this years Fava growing operation.
My garden is in the Rhine valley in Bonn about 1. 5 km from the river. The soil is heavy clay.
I already grew some Favas in the last two or three years. Mostly polish varieties. I had good success in the first year. Later I lost a lot of plants to voles when planting early in the season.
Since we have very mild winters here I tried autumn sowing and overwintering this winter. Unfortunately voles took most of the seedlings and slugs finished off the rest.
Since the presoaked February sowing took a heavy toll as well and is now no bigger or better than the early/mid March planting, I will in the future refrain from too early plantings and overwintering attempts.
Overwintered plants on the 17th of February:
First planting in the 3rd week of February:
First seedling up on 9th of March:
Second planting, same seed mix, on the 9th of March:
First planting on the 16th of March. Vole damage:
Third planting, same seed mix, on the 23rd of March:
Progress of the first plants on the 22nd of March and more damage:
Second planting coming up on the 5th of April:
Third planting coming up on the 8th of April:
Fourth planting on the 8th of April:
First, second and thrid planting on the 19th of April:
First, second and forth planting on the 27th of April after a late hard frost:
5th of May, first flowers on the plants sown in February:
13th of May early March planting is flowering as well:
So far so good, but had I not started to use slug poison, I would have lost most of the plants to slugs.
Last year I saw Favas fruiting in another garden some time in September or even October, so another planting later in season is an option, but I have no more space nor seeds.
I hope to be able to save more homegrown seeds this time around and not wast them on winter plantings. So my own little garden grex is starting. I will collect the seeds from plants with the least slug damage from the mixed early plantings, as well as the best plants of the swedish varieties, my own mix from 2023 and the dutch seeds (of whitch one is has variegated leaves!).
I love fresh Favas in butter 
I’ve had fava seedlings regenerate from the roots after early vole damage (and quickly “catch up” to undamaged plants ), though I haven’t had to deal with the slug counterattacks. I’m also planting much later due to snow; so the pressure is probably much less intense.
