hello all european fava growers, here is the place to discuss our 2025-26 season of fava landrace crops if you want to joint this idea of a combined effort of european breeders to mulitiply, enhance genetics, learn about this crop and other intentions.
I will be the coordinator this season, which means I will just probably be the one posting the most frequently.
My situation :
location : south brittany (near quimperlé) oceanic mild climate, very little frost
plot of land I started to cultivate only 2 years ago, so still out of balance, with slugs and bindweed. Good mineral structure, poor organic content. Soil life improved over the last two years.
the other crops I grow are mainly legumes and cereals with a few vegetables in-between.
My landrace:
I started by assembling a dozen origins 4 years ago, grew them 4 seasons, sometimes winter sowing, sometimes spring sowing, last year both.
every year I add new sources from friends and seed exchanges
every year I keep a safety stock just in case, and I mix this safety stock with the new harvest.
No separation of varieties, extremely little documentation so far. I view this as Josepth’s method “just put them all together, grow them all together and dont’ try to track anything special” sort of approach.
last year I had no dominant phenotype in the harvest, wich I take as a good news
My intentions :
breed a diverse and if possible evolutionary population (not easy with legumes, they don’t cross easily)
Greens consumption is not my target. I can have a few meals at the green season, but my motivation is vegetal protein.
this crop can produce in extremely diverse conditions and makes use of the winter rainfalls
My plan this year
I started sowing a few days ago. My soil is still warm because autumn is not yet established
about 2,5 square meters - 3 row - 20 cm spacing - 3-4 varied seeds per hole - 1-2cm deep
I plan to sow a new series each month until march and see what happens
not sure I will try to select a “good” sowing time, based on harvest weight, I think I am trying to establish “series sowing” as a practice to secure a harvest every year…
What about you ? Plans, soil, climate, seeds, intention ?
I am a big fan of fava beans, I have been growing them successfully in the past, this year was terrible due to very high temperatures early in the season and also due to extreme draught. My soil is nearly all sand, marked as unsuitable for agriculture, usually such places are being converted to pine monocultures. It is in theory equivalent of zone 6b, but this year we had 48 degrees in shade.
My main goal is to get a good harvest of favas as soon as possible, before heat wave and drought kills them. Autumn or winter sowing usually does not work well, since we can still have frosts - 20 C and below. That kills favas under fleece. Therefore I usually prepare seedlins indoors and plant them out as early as possible, when we n longer expect temperatures lower than -8 C.
My garden is small, so number of plants is limited. Despite of that I try to diversify favas as much as possible, with a slight preference for “rare” and “weird” colors.
I love fava beans for their diversity, but above all for eating them. Last year, I had a great harvest to eat, but my space for seeds was destroyed by early heat waves. So we need to adapt the beans to survive the winter outdoors and reach maturity before the hot temperature arrives…
I have a mix of beans from GTS exchanges, some from friends’ travels, others from seed banks… but this year my mix should explode in diversity because I’ve added three packets from :
Here is my mixture that I sowed yesterday :
At the bottom of the photo is my mix until 2025, and at the top are the new additions from Cicada Seeds.
Hello Wojciech, sorry to read about your bad harvest this year, mine was also minimal in quantity. Did you manage to get some seeds through or did you loose everything ? Do you need some seeds to be sent to your for 2026 ? don’t hesitate to ask ….
Hello Stephane, congratulations for the beauty of your mix ! what bright colors ! I am jealous because mine this year were very dark in colors so much so that I did not feel like taking pictures…
Have you already started sowing ?
@isabelle , I believe that the secret to promoting adaptive gardening is to assemble grexes and display beautiful, incredibly colorful crops… From that moment on, all gardeners will want to get on board!
Yes, I’ve already planted two seedlings… The less attractive ones for consumption in the garden… Some of the more attractive ones in a place protected from the cold against a wall with a frame that I can open.
@Patate , Michalina is a friendly gardener, I love the work she does. !… I absolutely wanted these seeds in my mix because this genetics comes from far away and is also very diverse… So I placed an order on her website, but with shipping costs and customs duties, the bean seeds are very expensive! I have to make sure they are harvested.
We must find a way to exchange seeds between Canada and France.
Hello Isabelle, many thanks for asking and for your generous offer. I have collected roughly same amount of seeds I have planted I put them aside and they are waiting for a good moment to deal with them. I am taking advantage of the last frost-free days to refurbish my raised beds. I will be dealing with seeds from mid December onwards. If I figure out that I need more favas, I will drop you a line. Once again, many thanks, I appreciate that.
Perfect, I am bringing back from Canada two more packets of Michalina’s fava mix, so we can have plenty to reproduce in France! I’ll plant them along with your mix @stephane_rave this year, even though your seeds are already in the ground and the Cicada mix will have to wait till winter/spring when I get back to France with them. Looking forward to seeing what shows up the same or differently between our two gardens.
hello rachel, if you can bring back one more packet for me I will gladly pay for it and sow them as one of my series this year. Just if it is easy for you . If not, I will wait until you or stephane has some to share / trade with me.
Hi, I’d be happy to but I am only here until December 8th, so you’d just have to make sure it got here before then. I know there have been some problems with the Canadian post being on strike. Otherwise, seeing that I bought two packets, I could just send you one of them when I get back to France. I feel it’s more important to plant in more varied environments that more in my garden! Especially now that I know that @stephane_rave has some too, we should be able to get that genetics going in our mixes.
Would it be fair to say that we as a group should in future look at two differing populations? One winterpopulation and a springpopulation and keep genetics kind of seperate?
Mine have those winterhardy @polarca genetics in them, i hope to still get a chance to plant them before next week. I’ve added beans from Jacek and some from a Dutch firm as well as some Peruvians i didn’t plant from Antibes.
@marcela_v was in Morocco and brought back fava’s that are probably more adapted to heat. I read Africa acounts for 20-25% of global fava bean production, most coming from Tunisia/Egypt/Morocco, but Ethiopia and Sudan as well, grown in relatively cooler regions.
I need to add those from @polarca and @jacek, so I’ll go through you, Hugo, to get some seeds at the end of the season.
Especially since you have the ones from South America that you pick in Antibes.
For red-cheeked fava beans, this is this type (darker color in the seed cavity) found in South America :
Maybe @ThomasPicard can go bean hunting for us in Peru this winter?
@Hugo For the moment, I only grow one grex, the one that is suited to autumn sowing. fava beans no longer grow in my garden if they are sown in spring (too dry and hot, resulting in too many aphids and poor harvests…).
@Patate ,do you think we could exchange our populations at the end of the season?
That is a discussion I would love to expand :
so far I have considered autumn sowing and spring sowing of fava as two modalities for growing one population . Every year I mix the two.
(By the way, this is not what I do with wheat. I keep autumn-sown and spring-sown harvests separate.. But this FURAT population out of which I have derived my two sup-populations is very old, very diverse, and has been evolutionary for decades)
For Fava, I thing my plan is to create the “initial very diverse population”, that could be the mother of adapted sub populations in the decades to come (how modest …) . This is why I add anything I find. This is also why I plan to sow multiple series this year and probabely will mix them all after harvest.
Let’s remember that fava crosses much less easily than veggies so it can take some time , years, before diversification by cross pollination occurs.
However, Hugo, Stephane, and all, it is very interesting too if any of you want to start selecting for a given season . This is what this focus group in made for. Share about what we are attempting to do and about our results.
I think it ties nicely in to the ‘proof of concept’ criterium to create a population of well adapted favas that are better resistant against hotter circumstances. Despite knowing it can take years. Hopefully one of us one day gets good at manual crossing.
As well it can be a cathalyst to get people on board that now are so discouraged by the results annuals provide that few even try. (Spain).
And it can also be of service to people in developing countries, where we take the genetics from if we manage to create something of an allround landrace. But that’s just the idealist in me talking, so let’s stick to discussing point 1.
I put them aside and they are waiting for a good moment to deal with them. I am taking advantage of the last frost-free days to refurbish my raised beds. I will be dealing with seeds from mid December onwards. If I figure out that I need more favas, I will drop you a line. Once again, many thanks, I appreciate that.
…) . This is why I add anything I find. This is also why I plan to sow multiple series this year and probabely will mix them all after harvest.