FAVA BEANS 2025-26 european focus crop

[isabelle (Harlé)]

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 ?

[WojciechG (Wojciech Górny)]

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.