Sprouting fava beans in a dish of water
Posted by Lauren on 15 Mar 2009 at 12:19 pm | Tagged as: pictures, planting, spring
Local food friends Anne & Ryan got us a packet of crimson-flowered fava beans from Seed Dreams, a small seed company in Port Townsend. Yay! I have put them in water to chit, also known as pre-sprouting.
Great post! I have asked multiple times how to plant sprouted seeds. Now I know for sure that the sprout goes down! I like Chris Smith’s article. I sure hope he goes to the Times, they could sure use a garden section. Theirs is pittiful.
Thanks for sharing, now I know I will do this with my peas and beans. I’m so glad I learned this today!
Pre-sprouting can be risky, because once the seeds have roots they absolutely must be kept moist.
Ah, the beauty of fava beans. Incomparable. How many months until dinner??? :)
I just did parts of the seed with the kids. They love peeling off the seed coat and finding the little radicle (root) and plumule (tiny leaf.) But I wouldn’t recommend wasting any of those yummy fava seeds. We usually perform our experiments on the lesser-loved lima.
Hey, aren’t there new chicks on the farm? You said there were new fancy chickens available last Friday. The people want pictures.
There was some lameness and misunderstandination at the feed store. We have only the old new chickens, who, FWIW, have reached the dinosaur stage of their development. Tinosaurs, we call them.
Tinosaur pictures also appreciated.
Also, Lauren has emailed re: egg difficulties. I think you need to train the dogs to retrieve eggs for you.
I sure hope everything works out with your chicks! Sorry to hear there were issues.
Oh, everything is fine; it’s just that they didn’t have the chicks we thought they were going to, so we didn’t get any new. And we think the laying hens are hiding eggs from us somewhere in the yard when they are free-ranging around during the day.
Sinfonian: If you let the beans (or peas) go a bit longer, they will develop both a root and a stem & leaves, at which point it is quite clear which way to plant them! :)
Hey, there were some comments in the moderation queue that I somehow didn’t notice. I don’t know what that’s about — it is supposed to email me — but they are there now. Sorry, forgotten commenters! Sinfonian, note EJ’s comment about the roots being kept moist once pre-sprouting has begun.
[...] sprouted these beans in a dish of water, which worked beautifully, and then I waited too long to plant them and I didn’t think any of [...]