Growing Fava Beans: A Complete Profile
By Growing Home Greens Team · July 25, 2026
Fava beans (also called broad beans) look and grow like nothing else in the bean family. Where snap and pole beans want warm soil and hate frost, fava beans want cool weather and go in the ground earliest of any bean you’ll grow.
Sowing it as soon as the soil can be worked
Direct-sow seed 1 inch deep as soon as the soil can be worked in spring. There’s no need to wait for the last frost date the way you would with bush or pole beans. Where winters stay above 10°F, fava beans can also be sown in late summer for an overwintered crop that resumes growth in spring. Expect harvest around 75-79 days from sowing.
Heat is the enemy, not cold
Disease pressure and poor pod set climb fast once daytime temperatures push past 80°F, so a late, hot spring is the main thing that goes wrong. Get seed in the ground early rather than treating it like a warm-season bean. A heat-tolerant variety like ‘Vroma’ buys some insurance if your spring is unpredictable, but early sowing still does more of the work than variety choice alone. Aphids are also a common visitor to the tender growing tips; pinching those tips once plants are flowering well both discourages aphids and redirects energy into pod fill.
The earliest bed-filler ahead of a warm-season crop
Like other legumes, fava beans fix their own nitrogen, so they’re a good crop to precede a heavy feeder in rotation. Because they’re planted and harvested earlier than most other beans, they also make a useful early-season bed-filler ahead of a warm-season crop planted in the same spot later on.
Sources: Fava Bean Key Growing Information, Johnny’s Selected Seeds; Vroma Fava Bean Seed, Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
Companion planting guide for Fava Bean (Broad Bean) · Find your planting dates
Typically viable in USDA zones 3-10. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.
Method: Direct sow: Direct-sow outside. Fava Bean (Broad Bean) doesn't transplant well, or doesn't need the extra time indoors.
See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →
How many Fava Bean (Broad Bean) plants fit per square foot?
Spacing: 4 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 2-4 ft.
Varieties worth considering
- 'Vroma': Johnny's Selected Seeds bred it for heat tolerance and lodging resistance, the two things most likely to go wrong with fava beans if spring turns hot before the pods are set. It also holds up better than old-standard Broad Windsor types when a late planting runs into warm weather rather than the cool stretch fava beans want. (source)
- 'Sweet Lorane': Territorial Seed selected this one in the mid-1980s specifically for cold tolerance and flavor, small-seeded (45 per ounce, against Broad Windsor's 15) and quick-cooking. It can be fall-sown in zones 6 and up for an overwintered crop maturing in late May, the earliest possible harvest of the three here. (source)
- 'Broad Windsor': The old-standard type Vroma is bred to outperform in heat: large buff seeds, a sturdy 4-foot bush, hardy to 12°F. Territorial rates it at 80 days from direct seeding. Grow it if you want the biggest individual beans rather than Sweet Lorane's smaller, faster ones. (source)
Cited from the source shown next to each variety. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement.
Where to buy fava bean seeds
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See it growing
Search YouTube for "growing fava bean (broad bean)" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)
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Growing Fava Bean (Broad Bean): A cool-season legume planted extra early, unlike every other bean in the garden, with picks for cold tolerance and heat tolerance.
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