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applestar
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Southern "real" peas -- more info please

rkunsaw wrote:We're getting lots of peas too.(we grow real peas...crowder,purple hull :lol: )
not those green things you folks farther north grow. :? Actually I've tried growing English peas several times with no luck. :cry: But we are feasting on crowder peas,okra and tomatoes right now.
Larry
Speaking of those "other" peas... has anyone tried using them in a "Three Sisters" planting instead of beans? I have California No. 5 blackeyed peas that are going WILD -- I didn't know they twined and climbed... I have to remember that they're actually beans. C#5 might be too vigorous actually. I'm thinking of planting Pinkeyes next year, which Ozark Lady recently called "Purple Hull Pinkeyes."

What are your favorites? How do they grow? What do you do with them? (How to cook them? How to preserve them?)

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Ozark Lady
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I have beans in the country gentleman corn at the moment.
The Pink eye purple hull peas are in the peppers bed, they aren't very large at the moment so I am unsure of the growth habits.
I have the various kinds of field peas, but haven't planted them as of yet. So I can't tell you much about growing them.

I normally have no luck with peas or beans, even the heat lovers like field peas and limas... I didn't know until this year that you should fertilize them.

I remember being a kid and shelling peas alot, since my folks grew them.
You wait for the peas to get formed good in the shells, usually when they are about 8-10" long. Then you harvest the mature ones. You shell these out and discard the hulls. These will be tender and you could easily cut them with a finger nail. Your fingers will all be discolored from this!

Once shelled you can blanch them and freeze them, or you can put them on to cook. Since they are tender it won't take alot of cooking time.
You would probably add some meat for flavoring, usually bacon.

Some people like to add other stuff to their peas, but I like them with just a bit of bacon and some salt and nothing more added. Google a dish called "Hopping John" that some folks like.

After you pick the peas a time or two you leave the pods on the plant to dry all the way up. These will be dry peas, that you can use for seed, or continue drying them for cooking like any dry bean.

I have pink eye purple hull, big boy crowder, calico crowder, and red ripper peas on hand to try growing this year. In years past I had california black eye and they never did grow well for me. Not surprising since no legumes grew well.

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applestar
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Thanks Ozark Lady! Reading your post, I really think you need to inoculate the seeds with appropriate rhizobium innnoculant just prior to sowing them. Make sure not to let sunlight touch them, and plant either on a cloudy day when you KNOW sun won't be coming out, or close to evening. I like to plant them just before the skies open up and start to rain.

Just about my entire garden has hosted peas and beans at some point, and I know they're well populated with the N-fixing bacteria because if I pull up pea or bean plant, their roots are full of ripe nodules. They're probably in my own compost too, since my piles don't run hot enough to kill them. If you uproot your bean/pea plants instead of just cutting them at ground level, be sure to bury some in the compost pile before they get dried out.

rkunsaw
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Applestar,
The southern peas we grow are crowder and purplehull.We have grown blackeye too,but not for several years.
I prefer the taste of purple hulls,but my wife prefers crowder, so we compromise and grow crowder :cry:
We save seed year after year so I can't remember but I think what we are growing is called colossal crowder.

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Ozark Lady
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I need to do something. But you know, it is odd, I have black locust popping up in every single bed... can it be that the mother tree is feeding it and it does not have the nitrogen fixing ability?

Too bad that I didn't see this before I went to town, I went for diatomaceous earth and bt, and while at the garden center I could have gotten some what did you call it? Rhizome something... They would have known what I meant anyhow!

I don't do compost heaps, and I rarely pull out the stems of plants, I still have stems standing from last year, I really need to cut them off shorter!
If I am curious of why something didn't grow I will pull it, like the tomatoes that were a bust last year... they had no roots, and I still don't know why... but obviously without roots, to speak of, no amount of watering or feeding did them any good. But the peppers right beside them grew fine, so I am blaming my transplanting as just not breaking up the roots enough and they just didn't spread out correctly. I was more careful about that, and I grew the seedlings myself this year, so not a problem like that this go round.

Is there other crops besides legumes that need that nitrogen fixer?
Oh, I have peanuts too to plant, bet they need it.

I drag my feet when I know some plants just never do well for me, hard to feel enthusiastic about them in season, but in winter when ordering, I am invincible... :twisted:

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applestar
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OL, I was remembering this thread because I was trying to decide how to go about harvesting my blackeyed peas. Some of the pods are starting to dry, so I've been picking them and putting them in a brown bag to dry. I may try blanching and freezing the green mature peas as well.

I realized I didn't answer your question. There are different inoculant species, and you need to get one that's appropriate to what you are planting. Maybe the rhizobium bacteria in your soil, growing on the black locust roots is not the right kind?

Johnny's sells 3 different kinds:

Alfalfa/True Clover Inoculant
For alfalfa and red, white, crimson and most other clovers.

Soybean Inoculant (OG)
Inoculant for soybeans.

Pea, Lentil, and Vetch Inoculant (OG)
For garden peas, field peas, fava/broad beans, vetch and more.

--
BTW -- it turns out that Azuki bean pods dry and shatter while the short vine stems and foliage are still green. I've lost a few pods already. :roll: I'll have to be more diligent in picking them, but as it happens, most of the azuki beans were planted along the fence panel in which the wasps made the nest. ...and I got stung once, I'm not about to crouch with my face two feet below the nest level for the sake of a few beans. :roll: I guess these beans will be forfeit and either will self re-seed or get eaten by mice, chipmunks, birds?, squirrels, etc. over the winter. :?

LindsayArthurRTR
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What is the purpose of using the inoculants? I've only ever heard of this here. We just pop our beans and peas in the ground...no problem! Is this something I should be using? If so, why?

Crowder peas are my favorite. Pinkeye peas and blackeye peas are my second favorites, and black beans and greenbeans are my third.

We freeze them, but I've canned them before, too.

Did you know that you can make "apple-like" jelly with the hulls of the purple hull peas? Actually all hull peas. Each color gives a different flavor.

rkunsaw
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My fall crop of crowder peas are blooming now. I usually don't use inoculant.
If you wait until the soil is warm you don't need it. Soak the peas for 2 or 3 hours in lukewarm water before you plant them.They should start coming up in a few days if the soil is warm enough.
Larry

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applestar
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The "inoculants" -- black powdery substance that come in sealed bags -- are actually rhizobium bacteria. They grow in symbiotic relationship with legumes and form nodules on their roots. It's actually the bacteria that fix nitrogen. Well colonized legumes grow better.

NOT uprooting the spent legumes and cutting them off at the soil level leaves the roots and nodules in the ground to break down and add nitrogen to the soil. Nature's own "time release fertilizer" 8)

If you've been growing peas and beans for years, your soil probably already has a healthy population of these friendly microbes.

:?: I wonder under what circumstances you would need to re-inoculate? :?:

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applestar wrote:The "inoculants" -- black powdery substance that come in sealed bags -- are actually rhizobium bacteria. They grow in symbiotic relationship with legumes and form nodules on their roots. It's actually the bacteria that fix nitrogen. Well colonized legumes grow better.

If you've been growing peas and beans for years, your soil probably already has a healthy population of these friendly microbes.

I wonder under what circumstances you would need to re-inoculate?
Perhaps if you solarized your soil?

You said that if one has grown legumes for a long period of time, that would help to build up the rhizobium population in the soil, where does crop-rotation play into this? It seems to me that if you rotated, that would have a dampening effect on the build-up of the rhizobium populations, so should you not rotate, or rotate less frequently, when it comes to legumes.

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There is seldom harm in recharging a soil with beneficial innoculants, particularly when they are plant specific to a crop we intend to grow...

In this case, the rhizobium are crucial to legumes ability to feed themselves. In many ways, these plants we tout as being so self sufficient, due to their ability to fix nitrogen, are completely reliant on these tiny bacteria to do the job for them.

G5 brings up an interesting point, one that is a matter of debate among some permacultural circles I have seen; what is the true benefit of crop rotation? What are we actually accomplishing? In some instances, we do avoid pathogenic accumulation (clubroot in crucifers would be a good example), but we also leave behind the populations of biology actually selected and accumulated by our given crops.

We continually underestimate the role our plants play in adjusting their own rhizospheres by changing up root exudates to attract specific bacteria, fungi, and predators, and adjust pH thereby adjusting mineral intakes. This is a new line of inquiry that is just beginning to be understood, but it begs the questions that both AS and G5 raise.

I believe that in most cases, unless you have a existing pathogen, rotation is much ado about nothing... addition of known beneficial organisms is nothing but good (the plants will select what is useful to them or not), the use of some are known to prevent other disease and insect pests (is the clubroot thing an issue if we introduce Baccillus subtilis as an antifungal?), and it all works with the natural nitrogen looping soil always resorts to when left to it's own devices...

One of the reasons I am such a compost fan is that the compost acts as a toolbox the plants select from; we do not even try to select the organisms ourselves. But in the instances where we DO know what organism is most beneficial to our plants, aren't we acting in a symbiotic fashion with our crops when we provide them what they are actually seeking? And what is more natural than symbiotic relations?

:mrgreen:

HG



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