Coronavirus planting?

[philagardener]

I cook them as limas/shelly beans once they fill out. They freeze well too. Hopefully others will add their ways of preparing them. I haven't tried them as a dried bean but that would be worth investigating. They keep pumping out beans in the heat, and because the pods are held high they do better in my often wet fall season.

Glad to hear they are doing well for you, reed !

[jocelyn]

We grew extra peas this year, some to freeze and some for pea soup. Had pea soup for lunch, ahhhhhh.
i.postimg.cc/s2qRL5z2/pea-soup-from-our-patch.jpg

[flowerbug]

i picked the soy beans today. it was a test planting of Cha Kura Kake Soy Beans with the intention of eating them mostly as edamame soy beans. they were repeatedly chewed on by some creature (probably a groundhog) but still came through with enough of a crop to make them worth planting again in the future. i was out picking some other dry beans in the garden and decided that it was probably a good time to bring the soy beans in too since most of the pods were just starting to turn yellow and about half of them were green. at first i was thinking the beans were not going to be all that good or even big enough to done enough to consider them viable, but that was the pod shape kinda psyching me out. so after i opened a few pods and found the seeds were fully formed i brought all the rest in so they could be used or set aside for further drying. this was the first time in several years that i managed to get much of a soy bean harvest at all so that was also the reason to bring them in now instead of waiting a bit longer. they can finish inside here where it is safer.

as for cowpeas, the black eyed pea i'd grown before was a good producer but it finished too late to be a good crop here.  almost all the beans in the pods started to rot before i could get them harvested.  since my main reason for growing beans is to get some dry beans that didn't work out well.  a sooner cowpea that is edible as pod and as a dry bean has to pretty much be done by mid-September here but earlier than that is nicer because we can have dry spells in August to get them finished and harvested.

today i was out picking some of the early dry bean varieties i have planted and i hope to get back out again tomorrow to pick more before any rains come along.  it can always be a challenge here...    it's ok though.

[reed]

I have never eaten cow peas in any fashion. I am mostly after things that are easy to grow, have good nutrition and can be preserved without anything other that natural drying. This is my first time growing them but they seem to meet those criteria. Seems too like I've read that they have more protein than common beans.


flowerbug, the little bushy ones from Minnesota might produce a dry harvest for you, PM your address if you want to try them. 

[xdrix]

www.healthline.com/nutrition/black-eyed-peas-nutrition#nutrition
An idea of the nutrient in the cowpeas.

I grow the variety dall'occhio.
The cowpeas like the drought.

[flowerbug]

thank you reed, but i have to hold off on new things for a while - i'll keep you in mind for the future if i get a different situation and have more time/room to grow. i started this past spring with more peas and i want to get those more settled down before i start adding yet more complications.

[khoomeizhi]

interesting discussion. i've been growing cowpeas for dry beans for years, in a pretty damp environment, and rarely have any mold issues. i do try to pick individual pods as they dry off - that's been more for rodent protection than anything else, but i guess it probably keeps things from rotting on me, too.

[flowerbug]

yes, picking often would help. since i'm not an expert on them or the varieties i'll admit my first attempt turned out poorly, but the plants did grow well.

[reed]

I really like how the pods stick up off the vines, very easy to see and pick. I just pluck off the dried pods whenever I'm in the garden and drop them in a sack in the kitchen. I thought those little bushy ones were done but when I went to pull them out they had shoots from down low and are blooming again. The bigger, later ones are coming on good now, pods close to a foot long and lots of seeds per, collecting about a cup full every day now and the biggest bunch is still maturing. 

[reed]

Haven't checked into this thread for awhile. The cowpeas this past year did great! Got plenty of seed saved and bought seven new kinds for this year, actually easier and more productive than beans, I was very impressed with cowpeas. Also trialed peanuts last year with good results and adding more of them this year too. A few soy beans and a lot of grain amaranth are added in this year. The coronavirus ain't going away, unfortunately.

[flowerbug]

did you harvest any at the green pod stage to eat as a fresh/cooked vegetable?  my experience is that they love the heat we get, i would just need to find varieties that finish earlier if i were to try them again.

the shorter season adzuki beans i grew last year did well, even after being chewed on so many times, but the seeds are pretty tiny.  when i can buy them for $2/lb here at the asian market store i'm not sure i will go for a larger crop of them this coming season or not.

[reed]

We didn't care much for the cowpeas as green pods. They aren't bad if picked very small but that is too wasteful. They are very good as fresh shell outs and also dried. They cook much faster than dry beans. Similar to beans, different colors have different flavors. Where exactly are you flowerbug? How long of a season do you have? Never grown or that I know of eaten adzuki beans, guess I'll have to give a try too but this year all my space is already budgeted.

[flowerbug]

i'm not looking for cowpeas to grow here. i am trying to limit what i'm growing to what i know Mom will eat as much as possible. she's not a fan of black-eyed-peas or some of the other cowpeas i've cooked up. i'm in mid-Michigan.

[xdrix]

What temperature for the adzuki bean?
I will try to sow a few seeds this year.
I have try the last year but it was a fail one time under my growlight in a room between 13 and 19°C 55,4°F and 66,2°F and one time in greenhouse at a period with fresh nights.I has i have little seeds, i have try to sow adzuki bean very early for try to did two harvest in thr year.

[Dewdrop]

(Edited) I'm growing my usual, including the 2ft tall flax, like can be used to make linen cloth. I'm trying a different potato variety called German Butterball, that is one of several that will produce True Potato Seed (TPS), then I can save those seeds (which won't grow 'true to seed').
I do want to try again at raising Spagetti Squash, and see how long it stores in the cellar, unfortunately it might not store for more than a month, based on a quick internet search.