Grano White is a spectacular variety of Broad Bean. It has a large long pod with usually about 5-6 luminous white beans in each pod. They have a very fresh silky pea like initial taste with the usual Fava back flavour. The white colour of the seed coating intensifies as they mature and eventually dry out. The bean/seed internal is green as usual with all Fava beans.
The individual beans are generally large enough to manually pop from the seed coating with your fingers but they don’t always need peeling or blanching if picked fresh.
The plant is about 1 metre high and has relatively loose foliage and stems and large leaves and white flowers. They are fairly self supporting if growing strongly and will stand up by themselves till they get loaded up with bean pods.
The growing plant leaf tips are very tasty on this variety but are fairly loose so they may not look the best on the plate.
It you keep picking the pods they will keep producing for a long time into summer as long as they get some water and full sun and a good textured soil.
Grano White is a ‘premier’ heritage variety worth trying.
Although they seem to grow on just about any soil, a good mulched friable loam will get them producing the best. And they tend not to be reliant on large water supplies.
Fava are definitely what I would class as a pioneer soil building plant that is great for starting a new garden patch. You just harvest and then when there are no more pods in mid summer, you dig the plants into the soil, mulch it heavily with lucerne or straw and start a new crop after about 2 weeks.
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