Broad beans or fava beans are the most common frost hardy bean. Being frost hardy, they are also the first bean of the season. They are prolific and the freeze well.
I think they are especially useful because early sowings finish in June allowing almost anything to be planted after them and still grow to maturity. There's no other legume that's as flexible.
I use a rating system to help me decide what to grow and it considers lots of factors, but the main ones are how tasty it is, healthy it is to eat, how expensive it is to buy, how big it's harvest is, when it's harvest period is and whether I can buy it organically and if not how much it's sprayed.
Broad beans score fairly well in this system. They are a very popular crop, enjoyed by most people when young and a few people when mature. They are very healthy, extremely prolific, albeit with a short harvest period. They are fairly expensive to buy as well.
Their unique feature though is that early crops can be harvested in May and out of the ground in June, which makes them the earliest legume. Because of their relatively short harvest period they finish early and this means almost anything can follow them.
It’s unlikely that you will be short of bed space in the winter and spring growing window that broad beans love, so if you like them it’s worth sowing a fair number. They also freeze well (although not well enough for us to bother) and they work well in small clusters, or along the edge of fences, or up against buildings, provided they get enough light.
I think that makes it worthwhile growing them, if you are freezing them perhaps 1-2m2/person, if you are only eating them fresh I’d not grow more than 0.3m2/person.
I’d also reduce this number of you are growing later successions, because then they’d be taking up space that could be used for higher value crops in summer.
Broad beans are fairly flexible. I've grown them happily in full sun and partial shade and they do fine in my sandy soil, mulched with plenty of organic matter. They also grow fine in containers, which provides the option of an early crop. They do however benefit from a bit of a wind break.
Most varieties are planted in autumn or early spring, direct in the ground. Ideally they will over-winter as small plants, until February when they start growing again. Sown in February they will be about a month behind.
They flower in spring and the beans develop quickly, being harvest ready in late May through June.
<aside> 💡 For more details on the model that I use for describing harvest periods (first earlies, second earlies etc) please see the chapter on my growing framework
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