Plant · P-234

Fava Bean

Vicia faba

Fava bean is a broad bean that thrives in cool weather and skips the hot, humid stretch that kills snap beans, planted in fall for a spring harvest. Both the immature and the fully ripened seed are eaten, and the leaves cook up like spinach - a second harvest most growers never touch. Its roots fix nitrogen and are best left in the ground at harvest so the next crop gets the benefit, and the whole plant makes a fast, bulky winter green manure. One real hazard: people with an inherited enzyme deficiency called favism can get sick from eating it, and in severe cases even from its pollen.