Slugs and Salal: Veggies

Broad Bean

One of the most cold-hardy home garden vegetables -- and just about the first seeds to be planted outdoors in my garden -- is the broad, or fava bean, an apt vegetable to celebrate during the month of March. One of the oldest cultivated plants, the broad bean is thought to originate in the Mediterranean region. Broad beans were grown widely in Europe during prehistoric times, and they were well known to the Egyptians and Romans.

When one thinks of beans it's natural to think cold-tender and warmth-loving, since the most commonly grown home garden beans -- snap and runner beans -- are tender perennial South American natives that need a well-warmed soil to germinate properly and abundant amounts of sunlight and warmth to produce well. These aren't planted until May or even early June.

The broad bean presents an entirely different story. Not a true bean at all, it's actually a giant vetch (Vicia faba), a cool-season legume like the pea, and the hardiest legume we grow. Depending upon the variety the upright, stout-stemmed plants grow up to five feet (150 cm) tall with dark purple-spotted white flowers followed by pods borne singly or in clusters in the leaf axils.

I always grow a few short rows of broad beans, enough for enjoying fresh at several early summer meals and for freezing a half-dozen or so small packets for winter. But I have friends, true broad bean fanciers, who grow a whole sea of the plants every year. One spring, standing in their huge vegetable garden beside an immense planting in full flower, I discovered a whole new, lovely aspect of the broad bean -- the sweet fragrance of the blooms, not noticeable in my few plants but abundantly evident in this large planting.

Planting

Broad beans are remarkably well suited to easy growing in our west coast climate. The plants thrive in a long, cool spring season. March is the month for sowing broad beans, as long as the soil is not waterlogged. In highly favored gardens with open-textured, fast-draining soils and a warm site broad bean sowing conditions may arrive in February, weather willing. In gardens where the soil drains quickly of excess moisture in winter the seeds can be sown in October, after the fall rains have begun, for a spring crop.

The plants will thrive in a deeply dug, humus-rich soil that is not acid or oversupplied with nitrogen.

To make efficient use of space, plant broad beans in double rows spaced 10 inches (25 cm) apart, with two to three feet (60 to 90 cm) depending on the variety between each set of double rows. Within the row space the seeds six inches (15 cm) apart and plant them one inch (2.5 cm) deep in heavy soils and two inches (five cm) deep in light, sandy soils.

Soil

Broad beans grow best in a deeply dug, humus-rich soil that is not acid or oversupplied with nitrogen. If you know your soil is acid, apply some lime where the broad beans are to be planted. As a legume, the broad bean is able to attract and harbor on its roots nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Loads of available nitrogen in the soil can short-circuit this natural process.

Fertilizing

If the soil is well supplied with organic matter, no fertilizing should be necessary. But if you feel your soil requires a little boost use bone meal for phosphorus and kelp meal for potassium, or a low-nitrogen formula such as 4-10-10. The phosphorus and potassium (the 10-10 part of the formula) help to ensure sturdy growth less likely to fall over when the plants are loaded with swelling pods.

Harvesting and Eating

Embedded in the woolly white pod linings, the edible seeds develop and are harvested when they become visible as bumps along the pod. The large, meaty seeds are eaten shelled like peas and steamed tender. They freeze well following blanching.

Problems

The only problem commmon in broad bean plantings is black aphids congregating on the growing tips of the plants. Control them by pinching out and destroying the tips as the aphids arrive. Taller varieties may need some staking.

Varieties

There used to be only one broad bean variety available -- Windsor Long Pod. Now there is quite a selection of interesting varieties. Abundant Life Seed Foundation in Port Townsend lists Aquadulce, which yields flavorful seeds with light green skins, and Aprovecho Select, a broad bean developed in Oregon, with large, sweet-flavored seeds.