Vegetable · Fabaceae
When to plant broad beans
The hardiest common legume. Autumn-sown plants crop weeks ahead of spring-sown ones.
Sow direct
8 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
80-100
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Very hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make broad beans plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 8 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 80–100 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop or to overwinter.
Getting the timing right
Sow in autumn in zones 7 and warmer for an early summer crop, or eight weeks before last frost in colder regions. Autumn sowings also dodge the worst of blackfly.
Frost tolerance
Survives -10C once established, and light snow cover helps rather than harms. Very young seedlings going into deep cold are the only real risk.
Classified as very-hardy, with damage expected below -10°C (14°F)14°F (-10°C).