Two favas with particularly pretty flowers are standing out in my mix. Do you guys have anything similar? One a saturated pink purple and another grey black.
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I have some dark magenta ones, and a very, very pale pinkish-white one…
The dark brown one is gorgeous… I’ve been looking for some; if you can spot the plant, please set aside a few seeds.
From my first batch of seedlings, I’ll be eating the beans as early as this weekend.
For the first batch of seed-bearing plants, I already have some nice pods; I can’t wait to see them dry so I can open them up. 
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So would the best idea be to mark those two and save the seeds separately? What’s the risk you think that they will have crossed and lost their color? That is the whole idea all this crossing, haha. I guess I’ll mark them and do it anyway, that way we can plant next year and see.
I have nice pods forming on the few winter planting survivors and lots of flowers on the spring planting. How do you decide what to eat and what to save for seed? Different sections? Selection based on the plant itself and then marked for saving? Both?
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The plants I eat and the ones I grow for seeds are in different spots.
The ones I eat are a grex of three common commercial varieties that I started growing two years ago. Nothing rare.
The ones I’m propagating are from seeds I collected this winter. There’s a lot of diversity from gene banks, as well as purchases from CICADA Seeds and exchanges. These are being propagated to share with the “fava bean enthusiast community” 
.
But starting next year, propagation should be sufficient to have just a single group. I’ll continue to grow some for propagation and some for consumption, but using the same seeds.
The next step will be to taste-test whether there’s a difference between an ugly bean and a beautiful one.
Maybe the taste remains the same and the colors disapear after cooking, but I’m convinced there’s value in eating a diversity of fava beans for their nutritional benefits.
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I have just collected and cooked a few pods from the bottom of my seed-bearing plants and I see no difference in colours except some are a little darker green …
last year I noticed that the skin colour appears when the seeds approach hardness, when they are no longer good for raw consumption.
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It’s been a great year for fava beans… I’m glad I focused on growing a wide variety; everything is thriving, the first harvests for food are looking good, and the variety of blooms should yield plenty of beautiful seeds! 
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these are the november sowing, the one that escaped the vole predation. THey are in good shape .
I also have some spring sowing kept in a pot, that I have to water every day these days because of the heat-wave.
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ten days later, a disaster !
the local deer who was already picking at my nerves by biting all my peas has found the fava bed and started to TASTE each and every pod.
I feel very discouraged.
this year I have had the moles eat 3 series of sowing and I was just relieved I had this first series in good shape and hope of at least some harvest.
Now I don’t think I am going to get anything valid this year.
Hopefully I still have a half jar of fava seeds safety stock to sow again next year …
and perhaps, in another corner of the garden, that the deer may not find, a few leftover seeds I have planted in a pot. They are really really short-spaced and I don’t know if they will make it to seeds …
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@isabelle I am very sorry to hear that. Dear are my enemies also, the have destroyed 5 young fruit tree this spring already. 
I sowed some Favas in fall, and some in spring. Of the fall sown plants, only 2 (of about 30?) survived the winter. I replanted them to the others, so they can contribute at least pollen. (The plants are so small and mishappen, I can’t imagine that they can sustain pods). The spring sown plants are beautifull and began to flower about the 20 May. I planted seeds from these sources:
- Aquadulce (standard)
- a diverse mix from @Susanwakeman
- Karmazyn
Yes, not very diverse, but I am still trialing how to even grow Favas in my location.
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Here it’s going a bit better, so at least I should have seeds to share with you guys. I just harvested the first seeds from the few winter sown plants that survived the extra intense freeze we had in the beginning of the year. There are still a few pods drying that I’ll get later. I’ll be keeping these separately. These plants received no irrigation aside from rain and were in pretty mediocre soil.
The rest of my plants are podding up well (that’s how we say it?) and while I had some plants that were attacked by aphids, I left them on the plants and didn’t trim, and sure enough the ladybugs showed up and took care of them. The plants are a little blackened in spots but otherwise seem pretty much no worse for wear and are now aphid free after rain a few days ago. This year I’ll be eating nothing from these plants to save as much as I can to share.
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I’ve almost completed my fava bean harvesting with just a few straggling pods to go. I’ve got over 1kg from my general mix:
Here are a few of the different phenotypes, but I’m sure there are more with a closer look. Unfortunately none of the “fingerprint” types seems to have made it.
I also have 190g of my winter survivor - all seem pretty homogenous.
I’ve also saved three different plants’ seeds individually: 1. a plant with very deep magenta flowers, very pretty, 2. a plant with black/dark brown flowers (especially for @stephane_rave 
), 3. a plant which was very productive and made large pretty seeds
They will be going into the freezer as I can already hear the weevil larvae inside wiggling around and munching… how long do you guys freeze them if you do?
Looking forward to sharing with you all and seeing what next year brings! Good luck surviving the heat till then.
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Hello Rachel, 48-72h of freezer is sufficient to kill all weevils and larvaes.
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This is most of my harvest this year, with one colour I don’t remember having seen before.
The brown with some lighter shade honey color.
Does any of you have this type in your range of colors?
The brown with some lighter shade honey color.
Does any of you have this type in your range of colors?
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Thanks, Rachel! 
I have quite a few fava beans to give you, too, before planting.
It’s really surprising the Cicada Seeds beans I grew turned out to be mostly pearlescent, a trait that wasn’t present when I sowed them. You can’t see it very well in the photos, but the center has a shiny metallic color with a sheen like the inside of a seashell. It’s really, really beautiful, but I have no idea why so many of the fava beans, which were all different colors when I sowed them, ended up with this phenotype. I’m hoping this color holds up during drying. 
So far, I haven’t found any beans with patterns “fingerprint”, but there are still a few unripe pods left to harvest.
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I think I have a some beans that have a similar look as the up close photo @stephane_rave though I’m not sure about the pearlescent quality but you’ll have to see for yourself when we swap. None of your browny ones @isabelle. They look lovely! It could be interesting to give a summary of our growing experience to Cicada seeds to see if she’s had similar experiences with her grow out this year?
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this aspect, with a paler color in the center of the oblond shape looks similar in your “perlescent” ones, stephane and in rachel’s, and in my brown ones and many of my purple ones. Could that be related to something we have all experienced this year ? like unusually early heatwaves ?
it would mean the trait is epigenetic.
I have a similar feature in multiple color combinations in my mixed population here in the Pacific Northwest of the US. I think it’s more likely to be the effect of multiple different genes simultaneously regulating color expression. I’ve also seen the reverse phenomenon where seeds are darker in the center with faded color or slightly different hue at the edges.
The same can be true in peas and other legumes where multiple genes collectively express different aspects of color (e.g. hue, depth/intensity of color, location/part of plant where it’s expressed—seed coat, flowers, leaves, leaf axils, etc—and occasionally other genes that are required for any non-dominant color expression at all). This makes for tons of variation when you cross up diverse populations.
That said, epigenetics can influence gene expression, so it’s possible that plays some role too, but what you’re observing is not unusual in diverse mixes of favas.
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Hi everyone,
Julia Dakin directed me to this discussion. I manage a garden in the Czech Republic, located in the foothills of the Bohemian Forest (Český les) at an altitude of 560 meters (1,830 feet) above sea level. Our climate is quite harsh, wet, and cold.
I am fully committed to the landrace philosophy and modern adaptive breeding (currently running several intensive selection projects here, like squash polycrossing and specialized micro-climate/soil setups). Now, I am applying these exact same principles to build my own fava grex.
Last year, I grew Karmazyn, Superaguadulce, and Tundra together. This March, as soon as the soil thawed, I sowed about 100 of my own pre-germinated seeds, practicing strict selection by immediately discarding any plants that showed early aphid susceptibility. For next season, I already have a collection of commercial varieties ready to be mixed into the local gene pool (including Dreifach Weisse, Extra Precoce, Grano Violetto, Giant Exhibition, Habas Verde, Hangdown, Jankiel Bialy, Perla, Reina Mora, Stereo, and Suttons Dwarf).
Originally, I was looking into importing the Andean Rainbow / Diversity Fava from Cicada Seeds in Canada. However, EU phytosanitary paperwork makes this nearly impossible for small-scale growers. More importantly, I strongly agree that pure, heat-loving yellow Andean lines would be a massive gamble in my cold climate. It makes much more biological sense to incorporate these rare colors and genetics through a crossbred, already adapted European population.
That’s why I am so thrilled to see @mtttthwww_vdp’s work adapting the US/Canada Going to Seed genetics in Finland since 2022. A Finnish acclimation of these Andean lines sounds like a perfect shortcut and a match made in heaven for my cold foothills here in Czechia.
I would love to join the European focus group, test these genetics in my region, and contribute data back to the community. Is there anyone (especially @mtttthwww_vdp or @isabelle) who would be willing to share or swap a small starting batch of these diverse, Finnish-adapted seeds with me for the upcoming season?
Thank you so much for keeping these open-source genetics moving across Europe!
Best regards,
Jaroslav Hynek (Hynek_560mnm)
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Hello Jaroslav (is that the way to name you?) welcome to the focus group.
I am the host supposed to coordinate and facilitate this group , so yes, we will find a way to circulate our genetics to you.
This is a good time to ask everybody in this group if you have finished your harvest and what quantity you woud be ready to put in common / circulate / share .
Please be as specific as you feel appropriate about your growing conditions, your selection aproach if any, idetify separately the seeds most likely to be crosses, etc…
Once we know all this, we will decide toghether the appropriate method to exchange / swap / redistribute
For example, I would be happy to receive everyone’s surplus, mix all and reship to everyone if we all decide it is a good method and if we find a way to share postage costs. But other methods could be used. We shall discuss this later.
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