Try These Peas and Beans for Fall Planting

Even though it may be autumn, it is not too late to sow and grow. With the right strategies, even in cooler climate zones, it is possible to grow your own throughout the whole of the year. The key is to choose the right strategies and the right crops and varieties for your specific situation.

In September, I turn my attention to sowing pea and bean varieties in my polytunnel garden. Garden peas, Pisum sativum, and broad beans, or fava beans, Vicia faba, are two of the options for fall planting that I often overwinter in my polytunnel to provide an earlier harvest of these crops next year.

The main key to success when it comes to overwintering crops is choosing the right varieties of the crops you wish to grow. Some varieties will be better suited to cold winter conditions than others.

Here are some peas and beans to look for if you want to plant in the fall rather than in the spring or early summer months.

Pea Varieties for Fall Planting

When choosing peas for cold-weather sowing, look for smooth, round-seeded varieties, as these tend to be hardier than those with wrinkled seeds. The wrinkled type can tend to mold if they are grown in the colder, wetter conditions of the latter part of the year and do best when sown in spring.

Some pea varieties that I have found to be useful for winter growing include:

• Avola
• Amelioree d’Auvergne
• Douce Provence
• Feltham First
• Glory of Devon
• Hatif d’Annonay
• Meteor
• Serpette Guilloteau

Of the above, I have had the most success with dwarf varieties like Douce Provence and Meteor, which are easier to fit in the polytunnel and also easier to manage over the coldest part of the year since they can more easily be covered due to their smaller size.

My favorite currently is Meteor, which has excellent cold hardiness and will grow less than 20 inches in height, so works even in small spaces.

Protection around overwintering peas is needed in addition to the polytunnel itself—not so much for protection from cold but more for protection from creatures like mice and voles. I have found it easier to grow smaller dwarf varieties during the winter so that they can be more easily protected from animals, which is more of an issue during the coldest part of the year.

Fava Bean Varieties for Fall Planting

Fava beans are definitely among the easiest fall crops—hardy enough to overwinter successfully in many areas and easily overwintered in a polytunnel where I live in Scotland.

Broad beans or fava beans commonly grown in the United Kingdom for overwintering include:

• Aguadulce Claudia
• Superaguadulce
• Witkiem Manita

I have successfully grown each of these three varieties in my polytunnel. And have also overwintered even hardier field beans outside.

Even if you struggle to overwinter typical eating varieties of fava bean where you live, hardier field beans may be an option. And while these are typically grown as cover crops, they do also provide an edible yield—albeit one that tends to be smaller than the yields of the varieties mentioned above.