Fava Bean, Ianto’s Return (Organic)
Vicia faba.
Mostly large seeds of many colors ranging from tan, yellow, purple, lavender-tan to almost black. High culinary value and adaptive resilience — hangs tough in our winters when other fava varieties wither in the cold. Big plants form many tillers. Young leaves and shoots also make a tasty salad green. Beans can be eaten when very young as a green bean, as a shelling bean when mid-sized, and all the way through maturity as a dry bean. Strongly selected for overwintering by us, Nick Routledge and our growers in the Willamette Valley since 2007. Interbreeding population of many strains from Ianto Evans’ original fava diversity.
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Direct sow 2″ deep mid-September to late October, or February to March for spring sowings. Plant 8″ apart in rows spaced 1′ apart. Favas don’t do well in the heat; late spring through summer plantings are not recommended.
Seed Saving
Harvest seed from pods that are fully dry. Shell by hand or by dancing on the dry pods, winnow to clean. Test for dryness with a hammer – dry beans shatter, moist beans squish. Once seeds are clean and dry, freeze to kill weevils. Fava beans cross-pollinate; isolate from other varieties by a minimum of a ¼ mile to guarantee seed purity.
huntercat (verified owner) –
Where did you grow this variety? Washington
Overwintered well in Seattle backyard garden. Latter harvests produced larger beans than earlier harvests, and early harvests ripened high on stalks rather than from below. Flowers are lovely and fragrant. I didn’t do a lot of pruning other than pinching off after the first flowering, and these did well in that both ow and spring sowings continued to produce, although less robustly. I found the beans from earlier harvests were a tad bitter, while the later harvests were impeccable and sweet. Larger, later beans are buff or purple. Quite pretty.
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Bonnie Dodds (verified owner) –
Where did you grow this variety? Other
I grew six varieties of Fava this summer and only Ianto’s Return is still very much alive in January. I’m impressed!
But why isn’t Alaska in the options under “Where did you grow this variety?”
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