FIMBY: Fava beans do double duty

This is another installment in our Food in My Back Yard series, devoted to edible gardening.

I first encountered fava beans at an Italian restaurant back in the 1980s. Like tasty jewels, the emerald-green beans were mixed in with pasta. They weren’t limas, although about the same shape, and a lot more flavorful. Their waxy skins had been removed, leaving shiny little beans that almost melted in your mouth.

Intrigued, I started asking for them at farmers markets and quickly discovered: Favas aren’t your average bean.

Fresh favas are never found in summer; they’re a winter and early spring crop.

When other beans are wrapping up for the season, favas are planted now in early fall. They grow in winter with harvest of full-size pods in earliest spring. Meanwhile, their leaves and immature beans are edible, too. (Fava leaves can substitute for spinach; treat the baby beans including pods – no bigger than your pinkie finger – like green beans.)

Favas work hard in the garden, too. Their flowers support bees and other beneficials when few other plants are in bloom in the fall and winter garden.

Compared to some crops, favas are super-easy. They don’t need trellises; they grow 3 to 4 feet tall with little or no support and average water. (Winter rain often covers their needs.)

They can grow in average soil with little care. As a legume, they leave the soil better than when they were planted.

For those latter reasons, favas are often recommended as a cover crop, especially in local community gardens. (They work their magic in small spaces – or large fields.)

Legumes such as favas “fix” nitrogen in the soil. Through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that live in their root nodules, they can pull nitrogen out of the air (actually air pockets in the soil) and turn it into nitrogen the plant can use as fertilizer. They hold onto that nitrogen in their root nodules until the plant dies; as the dead roots break down, that “fixed” nitrogen is available to other plants.

To get the most out of nitrogen-fixing legumes, leave their roots to decompose in the soil after the plant is spent. Just chop off the plant at the soil line instead of pulling it all out.

Nitrogen is one of the big three macronutrients that plants need for growth. (Phosphorus and potassium are the other two.) Any plant that leaves more nitrogen in the soil than it uses is a definite plus for gardeners.

So, favas do double duty in the winter garden; they’re a cover crop you can eat while getting the soil ready for spring and summer planting.

Yet, many gardeners treat favas like alfalfa (another popular legume-family cover crop that’s used as animal feed). They plant favas, chop down the plants in spring and discard the foliage and beans (or leave them on the ground as mulch).

Instead, eat the beans and leaves; they’re not only delicious but full of antioxidants. They’ll help your health as well as your soil.

Treat the leaves just like spinach; they cook very quickly (stir-fried or steamed works best). Fava greens also can be used in pasta stuffings such as ravioli or lasagna.

Mature favas work well as a substitute for limas, but favas cook in a fraction of the time. Although the peeled fava beans cook quickly, they take a while to prepare.

It takes a lot of fava pods to yield a cup of fava beans. With soft velvety lining, the mature pods are quite big, 8 to 10 inches long (or more), with great big beans (an inch or more wide). But each giant pod has only a few precious favas. And they’re not ready to cook yet.

After removal from their pods, large mature beans need to be individually skinned.

Small, tender beans (under ¼ inch) don’t need their skins removed. But as the beans get bigger, those skins tend to be tough, chewy and bitter. Removal improves favas’ overall flavor and texture.

Skinning favas is a process. First, remove beans from pods. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Plunge beans into boiling water and boil for 3 to 4 minutes, until the skins start to wrinkle.

Drain; plunge beans into ice water or rinse under cold water. With a thumb nail or paring knife, make a slit on the long side of the bean and peel off the skin, one bean at a time.

Two cups of unshelled fava beans yields about 1 to 1-1/4 cups peeled.

It will seem like a lot of work (it is!), but the flavor will convince you to grow more favas next year.

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Quick note: Have questions about growing cover crops, cool-season vegetables or other edibles? Visit the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center between 9 a.m. and noon Wednesday, Oct. 8, for the Sacramento County master gardeners' free Open Garden Day. The Vegetable Garden and the other garden areas will be staffed with master gardeners eager to share their knowledge.

This will be the final Open Garden Day for 2025. Mini talks scheduled during the morning will cover: making a worm compost bin; growing herbs from different cultures; and adjusting soil pH for blueberries.

The Horticulture Center is located at 11549 Fair Oaks Blvd., adjoining Fair Oaks Park, just south of Madison Avenue in Fair Oaks.