Chickpeas/garbanzos

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I have planted chickpeas for years, but always in hot weather. Oops. (I've only had one harvest.) Seems like they are a very cool weather crop. The volunteers came up as soon as the snowcover melted, and they have been frosted and snowed on many times and are doing fine. The transplants are doing OK. If I can get my act together I might try overwintering small plants.

The garbanzos have previously gotten lost among the weeds. This year, because I'm growing them in very cold weather they are one of the few things growing in the garden. About the only weeds that're going strong right now are garlic and Johnson's grass.

Most of the garbanzo plants in the garden look like this:



A few have thicker leaves:



A few have much thicker leaves:



I'm wondering if the plants with broader/denser leaves might lead to a closed canopy that would shade out weeds more effectively. That's something for me to keep an eye on as I start selecting a strain of garbanzo beans for my farm.

[steev]

I've only grown Black Kabuli, which is apparently a desi type, and fine-leaved; I'm curious to see how your broader-leaved types do. Guess I've got to keep an eye out for garbanzo seed at the produce market, for next Spring.

[steev]

Seeded for transplants, Munks Moroccan.

[steev]

The Black Kabuli I sowed this Spring are well sprouted and vigorous, though locked in mortal combat with weeds; got to help them out next week.

[steev]

Those Black Kabuli are blooming and podding well enough, but it's clear that they aren't drought-tolerant; they seem to take heat well enough, if they have adequate water. They have pretty lavender flowers; in another area, I found a self-seeded, white-flowered chickpea, orphan of something I've forgotten, supermarket bulk-bin I think; I'm keeping an eye on it, as it's not croaking, though not watered. I wish it well; if it survives to seeding, I will shepherd its progeny.

My two plots of favas are coughing blood and haven't bloomed; they can't stand the heat and aren't going anywhere near the kitchen.

[steev]

Harvested/threshed a bunch of Black Kabuli; the Munk's Moroccan are gone, but not forgotten; if that white-flowered volunteer survives 'til next Friday, I'll water it.

[diane]

First time to grow chickpeas.

I bought Hannan seeds from Carol Deppe and followed her instructions to sow in March. She said irrigation is not necessary
in the Pacific Northwest, but mine was watered every week or so. (We don't get much rain)

Not all seeds germinated. The ones that did produced only one, or occasionally two branches, about 10 cm long (4 inches).
Most produced one pod, and now in mid July the plants have dried (except for one that is still green). The pods had one
seed each, but most were tiny - only four look as though they might be large enough to grow. I can't remember how large the
original seeds were. These four if glued together would be about the size of a cherry stone.

So I won't get a chance to try popping any. I haven't even managed to replace the seeds planted.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Following up on my previous post regarding the garbanzo plants having different leaf widths.

The plants with small leaves produced small seeds. The plants with large leaves produced large seeds (for a garbanzo). The plants with medium leaves produced medium sized seeds. I don't know if that correlation will hold once the genetics get crossed, but that's how it worked out this year.

Also there didn't seem to be any advantage in growth rates or out-growing weeds between the different types.

There was one plant in the non-weeded weed-competition row that way outgrew the weeds. Unfortunately a brute-force farmer accidentally pulled it up before it reproduced because he thought that he'd pull the nearby weeds after it had shown itself to be highly suitable for dealing with weeds.

[steev]

So easy to confuse the baby with the bath-water.

[ethin]

I was wondering what determines the number of seeds per pod. Most of the pods I've shelled only have one seed but some have two.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Aug 7, 2014 18:22:33 GMT -5 ethin said:

I was wondering what determines the number of seeds per pod. Most of the pods I've shelled only have one seed but some have two.

Same here. I shelled some of the plants as specimens, and some pods on the same plant had two seeds, while most only had one. There didn't seem to be any plant that was mostly doubles.

[12540dumont]

I was told to keep for seed only the ones that make 2 per pod, in future years you would get two per pod. As I can't seem to get any, it's hard to tell. Carol is wrong about not watering. If you don't water, they do not come up. However, they are really pretty drought tolerant after that. Too much water makes too many leaves and not enough pods. 14 kinds planted, all eaten by gophers. I didn't even get one plant or replacement seeds from 3 50' rows. Obviously, I should stick with favas. This year when I plant favas, I'm going to put in irrigation, just in case its yet another drought year.

[blueadzuki]

I usually consider two seed per pod chickpeas like two kernelled apricots/almonds; it does happen, and you can get examples that do it often, but it is more or less a development oddity, and even if you COULD breed for it, you might not want to.

The simple fact is that a lot (not all, but a lot) of chickpea cultivars simply don't have pods that are big enough to have ROOM for two full sized peas. With a lot of the strains, if two develop in the same pod, you often wind up with two seeds that are rather undersized, often having little more mass together than the one seed that would normally be there would (making it sort of a zero sum game, food-wise) Two seeds also often become malformed due to pressing up against each other, and those sometimes have problems germinating. Peas and beans may have evolved ways to cope well with pressing up against each other without malforming so badly as to be ungerminable, but chickpeas really haven't. In extreme cases the two peas actually often get stuck to each other (I see those all the time when I go through chickpea bags) resulting in two seeds sharing parts of their coat. While I certainly understand the desire to get maximum yield off ones plants, for chickpeas this is probably best accomplished by selecting for more pods; not more peas per pod.)

[ethin]

I was wondering if it had something to do with how well the flower was pollinated. In my experience with other plants better pollination generally leads to more seeds. If that is the case here then two seeds could be used as a way to screen for potential crosses.

[copse]

I've been doing some research on how much to irrigate my chickpeas, given concerns above about watering and growth going to leaf production at the expense of seed production.

This PDF compared no irrigation through to waterlogging, and found that full irrigation produced 3 times as many seeds. And seems to indicate that waterlogging is what reduces seed production, and that the corresponding seed production for full irrigation (observed by them) is 326g/m2 where planting was 50 seeds/m2 in rows 15cm apart.

The amount of irrigation water applied for full irrigation was equal to the actual soil moisture deficit, i.e. the difference between the actual soil moisture content of the current week and field capacity. The volumetric soil moisture content at field capacity was estimated to be 32 %