1 year ago

5 Nutritious Pulses to Plant for a Thriving Garden Before Summer

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Jonathon Engels, a long-time vegetarian turned vegan, is currently on a trip from Guatemala to... Read More

Fava Beans by Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

Loads of vegetables can be planted in early spring to provide fresh produce before the summer tomatoes and squashes are even in the garden. However, beans and peas are usually left off of this list.

Most cool-weather vegetables are in the Brassica family, with traditional offerings like broccoli and cabbage, as well as quick producers like kale, mustard, and tatsoi. The Allium family, onions garlic, and leeks, are sown in cool weather but take a while to provide harvests. Lettuces are a good choice, and several root vegetables—turnips, beets, and radishes—are great.

By and large, gardeners plant peas as the sole springtime legume. While peas straight from the garden are hard to beat, it is always nice to have something more to grow. Luckily, there are a few options for cool-weather pulses to plant before summertime.

1. Garden Peas, Snow Peas, & Snap Peas

Garden peas, also known as English peas or the little peas we get in cans, have large edible seeds but pods that aren’t edible. The peas are removed from the pod before eating them. Snow peas are somewhat the opposite: they have small (still edible seeds) as well as edible pods. They are eaten whole. And, snap peas have large edible peas with thick edible pods, both of which are pleasing to eat.

Why not plant all three? The thing with peas is that they are easy to grow, but they have a limited window in which they thrive. The weather needs to be cool. When it is too cold, they won’t grow. Then, when it gets too hot in the summer, they’ll begin to struggle. In the spring, though, they provide early legumes.

2. Fava Beans

Also called broad beans, fava beans are one of the rare beans that appreciate cool weather. They are native to the Mediterranean and nearby Asia, and they were eaten by the ancient cultures—Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians—from this region. They are one of the oldest crops to be cultivated.

They can be planted in early spring as soon as frosts have finished, and they’ll provide harvests in early summer. Or, some growers sow them in early fall to provide earlier spring harvests. The big seeds are ready for harvest when six-to-eight-inch pods feel completely full.

As with any bean, harvest the pods when they are green for fresh fava beans, or wait until they have dried for dry beans to store.

3. Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans

Like fava beans, chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans) are a cool-weather legume that comes from the Mediterranean area. They feature largely in Southern European and Middle-Eastern cuisines. They are easy to grow and perfect for planting before summertime stuff.

Garbanzo beans love plenty of sunlight, and they are otherwise not very fussy plants. They should be covered with a blanket or tarp if late frosts surprise in spring, and they take about three months to reach maturity. So, they’ll be fun to eat in early summer when a hummus dip on the patio just works so well.

4. Lentils

Lentils are a favorite in many cuisines, especially Indian food (dahl), and they are another pulse that can be sown before the summertime arrives. Again, their origins are the Near East and Mediterranean. Lentils are awesome for making homemade plant-based burgers and sausages, and they make excellent stews and curries.

These legumes can be sown a couple of weeks before the final frost, and they’ll grow on short (18” to 24” vines). They like full sun and well-draining soil. They require about 10 days to produce dried lentils (for storage) but can be harvested as snap beans in under three months.

5. Scarlet Runner Beans

While scarlet runner beans are frost-sensitive, they do well in the cool weather, above 50 degrees F. They come from the highlands of Central America where there is eternal springtime. They are well-known as an ornamental plant, too, because they have very attractive red flowers that hummingbirds love.

Scarlet runner beans are vining plants that can grow very long and need a trellis to climb on. The pods are beautifully mottled, and when young, they can be eaten as green beans. The large dried beans are often speckled black and purple and sub in for lima beans well.

6. Growing Spring Legumes

Spring legumes, like all garden legumes really, like plenty of sunshine, well-draining soil, and Support trellises. They germinate better when they are soaked for a few hours before planting, and they should be watered well after being put in the ground. When the weather warms up, clipping away soft, new sprouts will help with pest control.

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