Broad bean Crimson Flowered

The Crimson Flowered Broad Bean is an ancient, highly ornamental variety that stands out for its magnificent pink-purple flowering. It is a broad bean of very good taste and high yield that produces small straight pods. The sowing period extends from February to May for a harvest from June to August.

The Broad Bean is a legume that belongs to the large family of Fabaceae, like beans and peas. After falling slightly out of use, it seems to be making a comeback in vegetable gardens. It is a vegetable worth rediscovering without hesitation, as its cultivation is easy.

Originally from Asia and the Middle East, the Broad Bean is widely cultivated worldwide, both for its flavor and its nutritional qualities. Rich in energy nutrients, it is considered a starchy food. There are many varieties of Broad Beans, with varying pod sizes and grain colours: some are white, others are brown.

The Broad Bean can be consumed both raw and cooked. However, it is a dish that requires some effort, as preparing fresh Broad Beans takes time: you will first need to shell them and then remove the second skin from each grain.

To enjoy them raw with a pinch of salt, like radishes, you will harvest them when they are young and tender, thus avoiding the second peeling. Generally, it takes 1 kg of unprocessed Broad Beans to obtain 250 g of peeled Broad Beans.

Cultivating Broad Beans is easy, and if your soil is rather poor, clayey, and moist, you can rejoice for once! Broad Beans are made for you. Indeed, like all Fabaceae, they are not demanding. And it is in heavy and very fresh soils that they thrive the best. They are not very sensitive to the cold either, and can be sown as early as February in most parts of France.

Harvest: Harvesting Broad Beans simply involves picking pods at various degrees of ripeness, depending on how you wish to consume them: raw, cooked, or dried.

Storage: Fresh Broad Beans can be stored for a few days in the vegetable compartment of your refrigerator. You can also dry them and store them at room temperature. Broad Beans freeze very well too.

Gardener's tip: Broad Beans are the favorite vegetable of black aphids. It is rare for them not to be attacked by a colony that usually descends massively on an entire row. To dislodge them without resorting to insecticides, you can spray water mixed with black soap (2 tablespoons per liter).

This year, in our garden, having read that their presence could promote fruiting, we let them be. Quickly, we noticed the presence of ladybugs. They were not numerous enough, of course, but the harvest was quite satisfactory, even if, it must be admitted, the pods were black and rather sticky! In the end, we enjoyed them, and we believe that ladybugs are now more numerous in the garden because there is not a single aphid on our Nasturtiums.