Broad Beans are one of the most useful crops we can grow, they fill a gap in the garden over winter when little else is growing and the beans germinate at lower temperatures than even grass starts to grow at in spring. This means that we can plant them as early as February and continue to start them off and plant them right up until May, this method gives us a continuance of cropping.

One of the other great things about growing broad beans is like all legumes they fix nitrogen into the soil and this allows us to increase the soil fertility for a follow-on crop which makes them perfect to sow in a bed before nitrogen hungry summer crops.

You can sow seeds directly into the soil, but my preferred method is to raise them in either root trainers or the centre of cardboard toilet rolls. Continue reading How to grow Broad Beans or Fava Beans →