Perennial Favas

I have been growing fava beans for about five years. Other than dandelion greens, which grow themselves after I make a few wishes in my yard, favas are the easiest vegetable to grow that I know about. Around here I plant them in the fall and when the rains come they sprout and grow all winter. I pick the tops and eat the greens until they start flowering. Then I wait for the beans.

After I eat the beans and the weather gets warm so the plants stop making more, I gather any dry ones to plant next year. I have not yet had a big enough harvest to cook with the dry beans. Then I pull the plants up to make room for late-season vegetables, and turn them into mulch.

This year the beans were just getting good. I had eaten a few small meals of the first of them and there were lots more about to be ripe. There were going to be plenty. I was starting to worry that I would not be able to keep up with the harvest, and kept reassuring myself that if there were more than I could eat they would mature into nice dry beans. Then I went out to pick some for lunch and there were no beans. None. They were gone.

I don't think it was the street people. When my strawberries disappear that's who I blame. I may be wrong, it may be slugs, but that doesn't stop me from blaming them. But the strawberries are in the front yard, and the favas are all over. And I doubt that beans are as appealing or as recognizable as berries. Nor the neighbors nor their dog. They may be foodies, but it's easier to just buy beans at the market.

It had to have been the squirrels. Now my expectation is that squirrels would make a mess. One bite out of each bean sort of thing. But no. This was a leave no trace feast. That's what made it hard to believe it was actually squirrels. But I can't come up with any other suspect.

I mourned my beans and figured out what to make instead for lunch. It's still cool, or maybe the summer gloom has come early, so I thought they would set more beans. But I watched for a few days and no flowers appeared on the plants. Then I recalled that when I pick the tops for greens, they don't seem to sprout more from the same stem, but instead send up a new shoot from the roots. So perhaps they had to do that before they will bloom again.

So I decided to cut them all down short and see what happens. When I started cutting, I noticed that many of them had small shoots starting already. And this showed me that pulling them up may not be necessary. Planting them every year may not be necessary. This is now an experiment not only in getting more beans but also in keeping the fava plants alive all year 'round. In growing them as perennials, finding out how long they will live, when they will produce, minimizing disruption of the soil, maximizing biomass, root spread, nitrogen fixing ability. Giving them a head start on life and myself more beans.

I'm excited. We shall see.