permaculture

[Elfpermacl@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/19/97 12:01:34 PM, sals@rain.org (sal schettino) wrote:

>The one cover crop I planted that seems to do good here was fava beans.
>Thanks for the tip Dan.  Now how do I harvest these fava beans  for seed
>crop for next year.  Do I wait for them to dry ? My trees need N and favas
>seem like a easy N fixer to grow here in the cool winter. What do fava
>beans look like when you are picking for seed and what do they look like
>when you are picking for eating and how do you eat them.   

Hi Sal:

Are you sure that you asked all the questions on your Mind?  :-)

Yes.  Like any other bean (these are really a vetch) you wait for them to
dry.  You can eat them green like green limas or dry, like dry limas.  If you
cut the plants off a half inch or so from the ground, sometimes they
resprout.  Cutting some species of legumes stimulates nodules to fix more
N--I don't know if this is true for favas but surely the more they put on new
vegetation the more they are likely to fix N. 

Somebody or other has a hot-weather fava, by the way.  Probably the
biointensive people in California.  

Fix favas like any bean or pea.  Boil 'em in a big mess, drain, and serve
with salt and butter is my favorite.  Black and dark-skinned people may be
sensitive to favas of they have the recessive gene for sickle-cell anemia.
 This gene also confers resistance to malaria, which is more serious from
evolution's point of view, so folks whose ancestors where in a hot, humid
climate long enough for a little evolution to take place are most likely to
have this gene.  However fair skin and blond hair is no guarantee that you
don't--people have been mixing stock since there were people and older
civilizations got around quite nicely, thank you, witout 747s.  It took a lot
longer, so they were more likely to get real horney away from home.  So eat a
few at first and back off if you have a bad reaction.  I don't recall the
symptoms--I don't get them, my dark-skinned anscestors that I know about were
from the "new world," though it seems to have been here, actually, as long as
the rest.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981). Next  correspondence
permaculture training by email starts in Aug., '97. Internships available.
Copyright, 1997, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 USA
 YankeePerm@aol.com  

We don't have time to rush.