I must confess I have never eaten broad beans (also known as fava beans) before today. I knew very little about broad beans even when I started taking vegetable gardening more seriously here in Scotland. I’m a serious amateur vegetable grower and I still have a long way to go as I am starting from the bottom. I’m sure my expertise will grow alongside the knowledge and practice I acquire. It may take the rest of my life.

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Thoughts on Growing vegetables, and in Particular, Broad Beans.

In Scotland we need plants which stand up to the cold and gales. With this in mind I decided to plant perennial crops, to start off, which are both productive and resilient. ‘Plant once and harvest for years’ sounded like a good idea. I chose broad beans as one of those plants.

Reading online gardening tips can get overwhelming with all the good advice, for example,    ‘plant beans, corn and squash together as beans can use the corn as a bean stick to grow up; the bean’s roots grow much deeper that squash and corn; while the squash rambles around the ground keeping the soil cool and moist.’  

I decided, as a complete novice, just to grow broad beans, French runner beans and squash. I wasn’t confident about growing corn here in Scotland so I used bamboo sticks for supporting the beans, which were acquired from my garden.’

Growing and Harvesting Broad Beans.

I bought the seedlings from our local vegetable fair so all I had to do was pop them into fertile soil. I watered and waited.  It’s been about 6 weeks when I found lovely big bean pods. You have to bear in mind everything is relative as I have never grown broad beans; so I didn’t know how big they get before harvesting. All I knew was ‘the more you harvest the more beans are produced.’

I enthusiastically harvested them but when I podded them most of the beans were the size of young peas with a few bigger pods producing bigger beans. I realize now that I harvested too soon but the beans were tasty enough.  

Cooking Broad Beans

As I had no idea how to prepare them I looked on the internet for some advice. I also asked a cousin how she prepares them. The information was conflicting so I decided to go along with my cousin’s idea of podding (shelling?) them and frying in a little olive oil, garlic and pepper. We ate them with our roast chicken and other vegetables and it was delicious.

A Little History of the Broad Bean

The Broad bean has been around since Neolithic times; they found remains at the Jordan Valley showing domestication since 8250BCE.  They were also used in the Mediterranean, such as Egypt, Greece and the Romans.

From the Middle Ages till present, Europe ate dried and fresh broad beans. They are a good source of protein, fibre and carbohydrates. Broad beans can survive through cold winters (good for Scotland) and is a great plant for enriching the soil with nitrogen which is handy for growing other vegetables.     

In the Middle East they are known as fava beans. When the French, Runner and Kidney beans were introduced to Europe, by the Spanish, from the Americas in the 1500s the broad bean was not the favourite – yet in the UK you will still find that it is grown in allotment gardens and is part of the diet. Generally, in other places, broad beans are considered fodder for animals or food for the poor.

This last fact made me think of my mother who used to make a bean dish from runner beans, potatoes, onions and bacon on days when we had nothing else to eat.

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I wonder how many of you know of broad beans and how to prepare them? If you have any experience or ideas I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

Have a happy week

-Morag Noffke-