The linked package is what I grew a few years back. It was the only year a specialty nursery in our area carried Thompson and Morgan seed packs. T&M is a British seller but has a US website, also. But I'm not finding any favas on their US site now and the amazon link below shows unavailable, too. So I guess this isn't really of much help for now unless you were to order from the British site: http://www.thompson-morgan.com/vegetables/vegetable-seeds/pea-and-bean-seeds/broad-bean-crimson-flowered/4772TM I do remember that the flowers were not as large or visible as the white flowers on other favas I grew. I was a bit disappointed that the plant wasn't more dramatic when in flower. I think that broad beans is the commonly used name for favas in England. Here is a link that might be useful: Crimson-Flowered Fava/Broad Bean

Nobody in this area of the country will forget that "once-in-a-hundred-years" freeze we had last Easter! I plant by how the weather feels... with one eye on the calendar, but I believe more how soil and air feels and stuff like how far the oaks have leaved out. "Plant corn when the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear", etc. Frost hardy salad greens were in regular harvest stage and they were all fine. However, I had Black Aztec sweet corn 4 inches tall, assorted summer squash at first true leaves, Red Pontiac potatoes coming up well, all varieties strawberries blooming, figs had leaved out already, Super Sugar Snap peas a foot high... then we're being told it will be 25 degrees tonite!! Ron and I were able to cover most of the strawberries with heavy plastic sheeting (for me to remove early next morning when temp rose above freezing), and I dropped 3 gallon plastic nursery pots over the squash and potatoes (some 8 inches high). Next morning I took mental notes, and I immediately ordered more corn seed. I watched and waited on somewhat damaged squash; they stood still; I replanted beside them, and the new seedlings outgrew those that had "survived" the frost. Biggest potatoes had to resprout and were late and I eventually pulled them to make way for next crop. Those just emerging were fine with the makeshift protection and produced a crop. Strawberries at outside of beds were frozen, but a lot in center were OK... I figgered I lost 35% of the crop. Figs leafed out again and fruited a month late; Peas froze to ground, but most plants sent up base shoots, and I got a crop after all. My soybeans did not come up, and I found them as rotted mush, frozen with their bent necks less than 1/2 inch from emerging! The rest of the seed was planned to follow the corn first of July, but with start-over making corn late, I never got to plant soybeans last year. When I went to plant replacement corn, I kept find roots obviously still alive. I tossed out the first few, but then I got curious and left them in the ground. A fair percentage (35 - 40%??) sent up new shoots and cropped, altho later than the replants beside them. Mostly a nuisance to a gardener, but shows that variety would survive as a species even with a late frost some years. Worse news on trees. No acorns; no persimmons; no tree fruits of any kind around here (except my figs!). Trees did recover but a major amount of wildlife winter food was lost forever. Black walnuts sleep late in the spring, and they were fine. My antique roses (mostly Rugosas, Gallicas, Albas, Noisettes, Hybrid Musk)simply regrouped, leafed out again. The one-time bloomers (Albas and Gallicas) lost most of their flowering capacity for the year; the other groups are remontant; they just regrouped and flowered as usual, but a month later. Most hardy perenniel flowers and bulbs were not significantly affected. Your woodchuck recipe - still laughing! Back in the last century, I was joking about writing a cookbook for sale at local tourist traps: HOW TO COOK YOUR GARDEN PESTS. Most garden raiders can be found in game cookbooks, even a few with more than 4 legs. I did the research, but I ain't crazy about dressing out warm-blooded animals. Dressing woodchucks: The smell, the general ugliness, and that very tough skin that almost repelled my knife. I pretty soon figgered out something else I wanted to do worse that morning... My first almost-dinner woodchuck very shortly turned into deer repellant tossed under the tree where the herd gathers to lay up during the day and plot their night raids on my ripening corn. Assassinated feral cats (my neighbor feeds a population of them!)are also used for deer repellent. Anybody caught playing "lion at the waterhole" with birds at my birdbath will be offered a trail of canned mackeral leading into the Hav-a-Hart and will quietly disappear forever. Possums I drive 10 miles and turn loose; rabbits I just turn out locally. But woodchucks just eat too much too fast, plus they dig under my cages and barriers. One way trip for them, too. Fortunately woodchucks have 3 Achillies heels: too stupid to change their paths once discovered; day feeders so I can find them eating and see where they run so I know where to set the trap; one litter a year, so I can often get Mama and all the kits in 36 hours or so, and they're history until another one moves in. I check DAILY for signs of feeding everywhere I have a crop planted.... sometimes I'm still too late! I would expect them to taste a lot like wild bunnies and squirrels? Confirm, please. My brother in Wyoming supplies us with top-quality venison every year as a Christmas gift, and often include a few other sundry species. But as long as Arkansas whole fryers keep going on sale for 49 cents a pound, the pest cook book will probably stay on the back burner. Gee, not a word about fava beans in this one... note they are still fine today... in 54 degree sun and wind, with rain and cold on the way again... Jan

I have grown them in Massachusetts. You just have to put them out early. Plant the same time as peas. Hope you do not get a really hot spell in late June since fava beans really do not like hot weather. The way people grow fava beans in 'fava countries' is they plant them in the fall; they come up, grow a few inches, and hold over the winter. They begin growing early in their spring and are harvested before the weather gets hot. However, they will not survive weather below 15F which leaves that technique out for you. FYI, if you are growing fava beans, they can get a bit tall and sometimes blow over. I used to grow them in a double row and put a stake every ten feet or so along the rows. Ran a basket weave twine between the plants, fastening it to the stakes. Went ;up and down the row once. Did a fair job of keeping them upright. You might also try pinching the tops on some of them. If the weather is right, you will get new shoots coming up and get a larger harvest. The picture is not very useful, but it is the only one I have of fava beans. Sorry. Pick them small. They are really tasty. Bill McKay

They work better as a fall crop than as a spring one in our climate. Our spring cool season is usually too short for them as the heat generally arrives too early for them to make a crop here. Now, last year's prolonged cool and rainy spring might have been the rare spring when fava beans might have had a chance to produce in spring from a late winter/early spring planting. You're quite a distance further north than I am, but I don't think your heat arrives that much later than mine. However, if you are able to successfully get a good yield in spring from winter-planted cauliflower and brussels sprouts, then you might stay cool enough long enough there in springtime to get a good yield from spring fava beans. Down here in southcentral OK, it is rare to harvest much of anything from cauliflower and brussels sprouts in spring due to the early onset of the heat, so for us down here, they are more of a fall crop, and the same is true of favas.