Fava Beans Reach For The Sky, Jack

Not too many crops grow fast in the peak of autumn. Most plants are developing roots then, not their aerial parts.

So, there might be an exception in the fava bean. It might be growing a lot of roots too, but the greenery actually grew very fast in the cool fall weather.

Now I see how that Jack-in-the-Beanstalk story got started. These broad beans grow

really fast!

Something we haven’t tried before is to plant a cover crop in the garden. It’s not like we have acres and acres of a garden so it’s kind of small. The idea of a cover crop never popped up before now.

In years past the garden would be cleaned up to various degrees when the weather and time allowed. Sometimes we’d get it pretty cleaned up and other years the rotten tomatoes and frozen veggies and weeds would just lie there until renewed efforts came about in Spring.

Probably the mild weather helped us get out there more often and the garden is looking good, except for a ridiculous amount of baby lemon balm plants that have popped out of their seeds. Quick, get the rake! If you thought the mints were invasive, try lemon balm!

For the mini-cover crop fava beans were planted in October and sprouted just before November started.

I was surprised at how thick the leaves were and how fast the plant grew. In two weeks time most plants had at least two pairs of oval leaves each larger than a quarter.

At about 3 weeks old the shoots were harvested and sent to the kitchen to fry up some tasty fava greens.

The fava bean shoots were green right up until the frigid weather the past few nights. The greenery was blackened as the nighttime temperatures sank down into the teens.

In a few months time we’ll see what sprouts from the roots. Hopefully, we’ll be able to harvest some more of the fava greens for supper.