I want to sow a lot of fava beans. My normal way is to poke a hole in the soil with a stick and drop a seed into the hole, then cover all the holes with soil with a rake.
I find it a bit tedious when I have a lot of seed, as I have now. I wonder if there are smarter ways of doing this.
I tried broad sowing fava beans just as a test. That definitely didn’t work.
I sometimes use a dibbler for planting garlic. Something like that might speed up the process. But I suspect there’s probably a much simpler way of sowing lots of large seed.
I’ve considered broad sowing and then covering the whole area with 2 cm compost, leaf mulch and other organic material. That might work. It’s a lot of material though. With straw, it’s pretty easy to lay out. Has anyone tried something like this - I believe some call it a seed mulch?
My question is specifically about fava beans, but I assume I could generalize it to all large seed - other beans, corn, cucurbits etc.
How do you prefer to sow large amounts of large seed?
I have tried sowing fava beans under straw mulch over a year ago and I did get some plants, but i sowed late, there was a try period and i didnot water much, so did not get many.
Have you read the resilient gardener? Carol talks about some tools. Also sowing machines. In the book I am currently reading, Living with the Earth volume 2 they talk about a multi row sowing machine. But maybe fava beans are too big. Plus I don’t like sowing machines. I like the idea that every seed has been touched and placed by a human.
Next year i want to buy a furrowing plough, can apparently be used to make grooves, drop the seeds by hand and then close them again with the 'plough:. This year I used a home made wooden ‘groove maker’ for almost 4kg planted peas. And I found that already worked reasonably well. But hope the ‘plough’ can work better.
The problem with sowing any legumes from seed in my place is that so many animals like them as well. Therefore, broadcasting seeds and covering them would be just preparing a huge dinner table for them.
I have to grow transplants of favas and I found it very easy to replant them into the garden when the time comes. I just make holes with the dibber and I drop the seedling from a tray into it. Then I water it all. Goes pretty fast and I am sure that I have exactly as many plants as I want to, which is never the case in terms of sowing seeds. It all depends how big is the plot, I realize that it would have been a nonsense in a really large gardens, but works great for me for all legumes.
I like to hand bradcast smaller seeds but always rake the area and loosen a bit of topsoil. Im also thinking its a trait to select for…wether or not the seed can be broad casted or not. So many seeds are started in plug trays and the soil mix is different than the soil the plant will grow into…and the roots seem to run out of space prior to transplanting. Maybe those initial roots really need to communicate with the soil microbiome where the plant will grow and go to seed.
I have also used a stick to scribe a small furrowed line then dropped the seed and lightly covered using my toe to push the soil over the seed.
My father would till lightly, he had a tractor, and would hand drop seed into the furrows.
I also saw a youtube clip of a stick with a metal pointed cone at the bottom, the farmer would lighty punch the cone into the soil, drop a seed, and by pulling the cone out, soil would fall back onto the seed to cover it.
One year I had placed corn seed on top of the soil, then placed a handful of compost on top. The seed germinated, but the roots hadn’t anchored well enough, birds found an easy meal.
Definitely worth the experimentation to determine what works.
If a large seed like fava fell by itself from the plant, would it be inside the pod or not? How much leaf litter could fall to cover it up? Would the fava sprout from just the pod and having soil contact?
I’ve had corn cobs lying on the soil overwinter and sprout in the springtime and grow in a clump of like 20 seedlings. It was a year I had placed fresh composted wood chips into the growing area but not covering the cob. I didnt pay attention at the time, I wasnt thinking of adaptation…
How much seed are you thinking about sowing? What is the growing soil like?
How large an amount? If it was 25 lbs or more you might want to borrow or rent a seed drill. Otherwise, i would use a hoe to make a furrow, then drop seeds into the furrow using a 5 or six foot length of suitable pipe. You could improvise a hopper at the top end from a 2 liter soda bottle and duct tape.
It could be an area of 100-500 m2 - the whole field is 800 m2 and many of the crops I will grow there have large seed. Your idea with a hose dragged into a small trench seems ingenious and very low-tech. Is this what you do yourself? Thanks for the tip.
That is this one I bought used for the fifth of the price (far too expensive…): Canne à semer PL1 - Plantoirs - T000053 - Terrateck
There must be some low cost alternatives. This tool is good for your back.
You would find plans for doing your own there, but in french unfortunately (protected by Creative Commons): looks more interesting as you got an automatic tank for seeds : with mine I have to refill each time with my hand left free: I use a tank at waist height, fixed to a harness.
Yes, i have a section of galvanized electrical conduit left over from another project, and i use that to drop seeds into furrows without bending over. Then rake soil over the furrow, or make the next furrow close enough to cover the previous one with the dislodged soil. Repeatedly bending low makes my back unhappy.
