Planting Peas and Fava Beans in My Vegetable Garden

March 20, 2025

Planting Peas and Fava Beans in My Vegetable Garden

Today is the first day of spring and all of us here at my Bedford, New York farm are thinking about the gardens. In fact, the season’s first peas are already in the ground.

Peas thrive in cool weather, and young plants can even tolerate light frosts. It’s important to plant peas as soon as possible in spring in order to get a full harvest before hot summer temperatures arrive. Yesterday, my gardeners planted different varieties of peas outside in my vegetable garden. They also planted fava beans, also known as the broad bean, an ancient member of the pea family.

Enjoy these photos.

: Snow, snap, and shelling peas are all members of the legume family. Snow peas are also known as Chinese pea pods. They are flat with very small peas inside, and the whole pod is edible. Snap peas are a cross between snow peas and shelling peas – the whole pod is eaten and has a crunchy texture and very sweet flavor. Shelling peas are also sometimes called garden peas, sweet peas or English peas. The pods are firm and rounded, and the round peas inside need to be removed, or shelled, before eating. The peas are sweet and may be eaten raw or cooked.

: Peas grow vertically and hang from tendrils latched on trellis structures. I have always grown peas in my garden.

: These are shelling peas. The pods can range in size from four to 15-centimeters long and about one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half centimeters wide. Each pod contains between two and 10-peas. In general, shelling pea plants yield about a half-cup of peas per plant.

: Peas are packed with nutrition – high in protein and fiber.

: This season’s peas are from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, a source I have used for many years. Johnny’s Selected seeds is a privately held, employee-owned organic seed producer in Winslow, Maine. Johnny’s offers hundreds of varieties of organic vegetable, herb, flower, fruit and farm seeds, along with all sorts of gardening supplies and accessories.

: Out in the vegetable garden, Matthew cleans and rakes the large center bed for peas. We plant them in this bed surrounded with trellis fencing.

: The bed is all prepped. Ryan and Matthew discuss which side will be dedicated to edible pods and which side will have shelling peas.

: Matthew starts by digging a shallow furrow in the soil using a hoe. The furrows don’t have to be deep – two inches will work nicely.

: The pea seeds are hard, wrinkled, and inedible.

: The types of peas are written on large markers and placed at the edge of the bed.

: Matthew drops the seeds into the furrow about one to two-inches apart.

: Here, one can see the seeds well-placed in the furrow. Sow pea seeds four to six weeks before the last spring frost, when soil temperatures reach 45-degrees Fahrenheit.

: Once all the seeds are in the ground, Matthew uses the back of a soft rake to cover them.

: Nearby, this year’s fava bean bed is also cleaned and raked. In my garden, I always practice crop rotation. This is the practice of planting different crops sequentially on the same plot of land to improve soil health, optimize nutrients in the soil, and combat pest and weed pressure. Last year, this bed was used for kale.

: Ryan uses Johnny’s Bed Preparation Rake to make furrows in the bed.

: Another marker is used to indicate what crop and variety is planted.

: These are fava beans, Vicia faba. Fava bean pods grow on bushy plants with several stems, reaching two to four feet tall.

: Here they are shelled. They have a nutty taste and a buttery texture.

: Matthew drops the seeds in the furrows making sure there is ample space in between them to grow. This is called direct sowing, or planting seeds in the garden, rather than starting seeds indoors earlier and transplanting them outside. Some crops do better planted directly into the ground. These plants won’t experience the stress of transplanting and will not need time to adjust to their new growing conditions.

: Matthew fills about a third of the bed with fava beans. And do you know… Fava beans are also nitrogen-fixers? They improve soil quality by adding nitrogen.