The Cold and Fava Beans

Last night the temperature got down to 23 F. My Fava Beans are looking very droopy and sad. Do you think they will recover?

Mine are only up an inch and are still ok after temperatures as low as 15 degrees F. I planted late and haven't grown them in years. I remember mature plants getting blackened from the cold one January but I think that was single digits.

They may top die, but if they have decent root depth they will re-sprout - maybe even with 2-3 stalks next time..

I have yet to grow them However; I have done some reading up on them From what I have read, there seems to be varying "winter-kill" temps. Some are reported to begin sensitivity at around 25F, while others are hardier to 15F... I would think that prevailing winds, frost pockets and the degree of multch and microbe activity would have an impact.

I grew favas for the first time this year and was quite impressed with their cold tolerance. The variety was "Windsor" and IIRC they handled the 20's well, in the teens all of the bean pods died off first and some of the top leaves as well but they did continue to grow until I chopped and dropped em! Very impressive plant, it has made my top 5 survival plants lineup(they are high in protein!).

Out of curiosity, Vladimir, what are the other plants in your top five survival plants lineup?

They will be fine. Mine came through 12 one night last winter. They droop but they perk back up when the weather improves, and, as stated above, often branch out with more shoots. By contrast when I grew them in GA, they took a severe beating with a lot of dieoff at 16-18. I think it is because the weather vacillates dramatically there in the winter....it was probably 75-80 a few days before the drop to 16, which doesn't happen here. Brassicas do the same thing....even cauliflower survived multiple hard freezes and went on to produce here whereas in GA it would have been long gone.....

Thanks, Alder.
And thank you everyone else.
I feel reassured.

Hi Steve

Writing from the UK where I understand Celsius better than Fahrenheit, but in my experience the greener and softer the growth on the beans the more susceptible they are. I've had beans survive through -10C/14F and others be wiped out. Once we had a long mild spell through November, December and early January. My flourishing 10" high broadies (we call them broad beans not favas) were cut down overnight in a -10C January night and never recovered. But a slow growth through early frosts and cold nights makes a much hardier plant, so I'm always glad when we have a cold spell after I've sowed.

This year we had a cold early December, many hard frosts and down to about -4C/25F but now it's mild and very very wet and not expected to freeze again before Christmas - here in S.E England. So even if it gets cold in January I hope the early cold toughened them up.

Season's Greetings!

Steve Flanagan wrote:Out of curiosity, Vladimir, what are the other plants in your top five survival plants lineup?

Potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, winter squashes, and the brassica horde(mainly kales).

I live in a zone 5 short season climate, my choices would be different if was somewhere warmer....

We had an unusually harsh winter here along the Cascades with multiple snow and ice storms.  While there are some winters when I have a few fava plants that don't make it to see the light of spring, after being buried in snow for the better part of a week last winter, I was lucky to have this sole survivor out of the thirty or so plants I planted out in the fall.  If you look at the lower part of the plant, you will see where the branches died back, leaving the tips of the stems black.  I had lost all hope, but it seems that fava beans thankfully do occasionally resprout from the root zone after a severe winter.  I will definitely be saving the seeds to plant out and they will not be used in the kitchen!

My favas look nuked after this last ice storm. Before that though they looked fine and had flowers on them oddly enough. I hope they resprout and branch out a bit. That would be fantastic

I just found this thread a few days ago and now I'm curious if there are any cultivars of fava beans that can handle at least occasional winter temperatures of -10 to -15°F (-23 to -26°C). Winters in southwest Ohio are unpredictable and temperatures swing wildly from -10 to 60° F from December through February, so most fava beans cannot survive over winter here without heavy frost protection.

I remember reading that fava beans are grown in regions of Turkey and Afghanistan with hot summers and very cold winters. Perhaps I could look for fava bean landraces from these regions.

Update: almost all of the favas made it and are either fine or resprouting from the base! One seems dead but I’m still holding out hope. I think the lowest temp we got during the ice storm was 20F about.