Jackbean

Jackbean is a green manure/cover crop. It is a legume that is known as being highly efficient at fixing nitrogen and improving degraded soils. In many regions of the tropics there are systems that employ jackbean into sustainable farming systems. Unlike some other legume cover crops, it has more of a low bush habit than an aggressive climbing habit which means it is better suited than some others for intercropping in fields and orchards. It can be weakly perennial, sometimes going on to grow for a second year. There are food usages reported with young pods and immature seeds but mature seeds are known to be toxic. We inquired personally to Roland Bunch about eating jackbean. Roland is one of the world’s foremost tropical cover crop experts. He did not encourage consumption of any part of jackbean so because of this we don’t consume this plant or encourage anyone else to.

We are not impressed with jackbean as a cover crop at Cody Cove Farm. There is a general lack of vigor here compared to other cover crop options. The lack of edibility is another strike against it. We don’t have any situation where we would prefer to use jackbean instead of a type of cowpea which perform better and produce a great food crop. However, other growers seem to do well with jackbean in Florida and are excited about it. We will continue to produce seed crops for others to experiment with on the assumption that it is a worthwhile cover crop in different soils and conditions then ours.

This listing is for 20 seeds. Canavalia ensiformis.