Broad bean The Sutton

The Sutton Broad Bean is a dwarf variety, reaching a height of about 30 cm (12in), that produces small, green, tender, and tasty beans. It is an award-winning variety by the prestigious RHS Society, perfectly suited for square foot gardens and container gardening. Sowing can be done in autumn or spring for a harvest from June to August.

The Broad Bean is a legume that belongs to the large family of Fabaceae, like the bean and the pea. After falling slightly out of favor, it seems to be making a comeback in vegetable gardens. It is a vegetable worth rediscovering without hesitation, as its cultivation is easy.

Originally from Asia and the Middle East, the Broad Bean is widely cultivated worldwide, both for its flavor and its nutritional qualities. Rich in energy nutrients, it is considered a starchy food. There are many varieties of Broad Beans, with varying pod sizes and grain colors: some are white, others are brown.

The Broad Bean can be consumed both raw and cooked. However, it is a delicacy that requires some effort to prepare fresh Broad Beans: you will need to shell them first, and then remove the second skin from each bean.

To enjoy them raw with a pinch of salt, like radishes, you should harvest them when they are young and tender, thus avoiding the need for a second peeling. Generally, you will need 1 kg of unshelled Broad Beans to obtain 250 g of peeled Broad Beans.

Cultivating Broad Beans is easy, and if your soil is rather poor, clayey, and moist, you can rejoice for once! Broad Beans are perfect for you. Indeed, like all legumes, they are not demanding. And they perform best in heavy and very fresh soils. They are also not very frost-sensitive and can be sown as early as February in most parts of France.

Harvest: Harvesting Broad Beans simply involves picking pods at different degrees of ripeness, depending on how you want to consume them: raw, cooked, or dried.

Storage: Fresh Broad Beans can be stored for a few days in the vegetable compartment of your refrigerator. You can also dry them and store them at room temperature. Broad Beans freeze very well too.

Gardener's tip: Broad Beans are the preferred vegetable of black aphids. It is rare for them not to be attacked by a colony that usually descends massively on a whole row. To dislodge them without resorting to insecticides, you can spray water mixed with black soap (2 tablespoons per liter).

This year, in our garden, having read that their presence could promote fruiting, we let them be. Quickly, we noticed the presence of ladybugs. They were not numerous enough, admittedly, but the harvest was quite satisfactory, even if, it must be admitted, the pods were black and rather sticky! In the end, we enjoyed ourselves, and we believe that ladybugs are now more numerous in the garden because there is not a single aphid on our Nasturtiums.