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Post by macmex on Feb 13, 2018 6:49:34 GMT -6
Cowpeas of all kinds attract a lot of insects because of the sugary liquid they exude at leaf nodes and flowers. But many of those insects appear to do no harm. My philosophy is to leave them alone until I absolutely know they are hurting something.
Looking good!
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Post by glen on Feb 15, 2018 14:25:41 GMT -6
Thanx George. I was just outside and noticed a couple of big yellow cowpea Long Bean flowers. So, we should be seeing some pods forming fairly soon. These beans are Long, about 10 to 12 inches. When I first planted them I thought they might be Thai Yard Long Bean. This was before I began learning a Little about beans. Each pod will have about 10 pea's or more. They look like crowder pea's. The pods can be eaten whole which was the way I used to always eat them. The key is to cut them before the pea's form much in the pods. They remind me of Thai Long Beans when cut Young. However, yard long beans get longer and have black pea's inside the pods. Long beans have reddish Brown pea's. My variety grows longer and produces more pods than yard long bean but they taste slightly different and the chinese absolutely love them and won't bother with my variety. I have read that Thai Yard Long beans are closely related to cowpea's but are a different species. I did not keep up with my sedes so I no longer have any. Its not easy to get them either since the Chino's are the only ones who grow it around here. Yard Long beans will kind of wind up like a snake so some people call them snake beans. Some call it asparagus beans. They are fun to grow like long beans are also. Very vigorous vines that have big super Green leaves. One of these days I will remember to ask Mr Chino if he can spare some seed and I will take better care of it.
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Post by glen on Feb 16, 2018 12:47:04 GMT -6
This morning I noticed a few more blooms. I also noticed that pods are forming. Every bloom forms a pod right away. These pods are fast growing also. In one day they are pretty long. There are 5 or 6 tiny pods that can readily be seen. This variety of cowpea's loves the Panamanian climate. After messing around with Oaxacan creme pole bean for the last 6 months or so this is really a different experience and it makes me appreciate the lowly cowpea and its ability to grow and produce in Panama's terrible hot and humid climate. Oaxacan creme pole beans are just full of blooms. Probably thousands. You have to really look hard to find any fruit set on the vines. Yes, we know that these are different species of beans but its obvious to me that conditions here are just not suitable for the Mexi beans.
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Post by glen on Feb 17, 2018 13:02:57 GMT -6
I am now noticing a few new pods forming that are 3 to 4 inches long or even longer. Most pod clusters have 2 pods but a few have 3. I think that later there will be pod clusters of 4. No blooms are aborting without making a pod. This variety is perfectly adapted to my climate. Production should accelerate very soon. The pods, if picked young, before seed is fully formed are just delicious. The pea's are good also. The last time I gathered the dried pods and collected the pea's I was amazed at the size of the harvest. I had a couple of lbs of pea's harvested from only a small planting of this cowpea.
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Post by glen on Feb 17, 2018 13:09:15 GMT -6
Ok, I wanted to see how long it has been since I planted the seed for this experiment. Seeds were planted on Jan 3 I do believe based on the date I see at the beginning of this thread where I talk about setting up the tee-pee's for this planting. Pods are forming now and it has only been about 44 days. This is pretty fast. Production is only going to accelerate as time goes on also I believe. We will see. I found a variety that is very similar to what I am growing online in a seed catalog. It stated that this variety took over 100 days. Well, in my climate, it is much earlier. When I plant this vine in front of the rainy season I seem to remember it taking a little longer, like 60 days to start forming pods. I need to start taking better notes I guess.
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Post by macmex on Feb 19, 2018 9:22:21 GMT -6
Here's a picture of Georgia Long, a long bean (cowpea) which I have had since the 1980s. Farmer Dill, who is a seed historian par excellence once told me that it is probably the same as the asparagus bean which has been known in this country since at least the mid 1800s.
This "bean" thrives on heat. The pods are roughly 2' long, containing only 8 seeds each. Seed is putty red in color.
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Post by glen on Feb 19, 2018 11:52:39 GMT -6
You know, after looking at different variety's of cowpea's for awhile, you realice that its real hard to tell the difference between variety's just by looking at a foto. Do you have any more clearer foto's of this cowpea? Looks like someone just planted a few sedes as an after-thought and never came back. My variety has that putty red color of sedes also but the pods don't get as long as you describe. 2 feet is real long. I have never seen pods that long. My variety gets about a foot or a Little more long and has over 10 sedes. I counted the Little sedes forming in the immature pods yesterday and got 18 seed slots where the peas are forming. Not all will fully mature most of the time into a seed. The Chino variety we have here has long pods that get way over a foot long and the sedes are black. I assumed that this variety is what they call yard long bean but now that am beginning to learn just a Little bit more about cowpeas I realice that there is a ton of different variety's and versions. And, I read that Chinese yard-long bean is actually a different species. Very interesting. Thanx for sharing that. The lowly cowpea doesn't seem to have the popularity of the traditional beans but they have their place during the long hot summer.
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Post by hmoosek on Feb 19, 2018 12:32:57 GMT -6
Some varieties of yard long beans have red and some have black.
There is also a purple podded yardlong bean according Chris (zeedman), but I haven't grown it. He says it doesn't lose its purple-red color when cooked.
the way I understand it is, yardlong and cowpeas are related, but yardlong is bred to be eaten as a snap where most of eat cowpeas in the shelly or dry stage.
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Post by glen on Feb 19, 2018 13:03:57 GMT -6
Long-beans are wonderful I am finding out. I used to grow and eat yard-long beans many years ago with my first wife who is Thai. They mostly eat them stir fried in the snap stage with tiny sedes inside. They don't really like the sedes or pea's like we do. Yard long beans are special if eaten very Young and stir fried quickly in a récipe. I always ate them but didn't really slow down enough to try and learn about them like I am trying to do now. I distinctly remember eating them stir fried with sliced strips of pork and other veggy's. With Jasmine rice of course. Quite delicious. I have grown them once since I moved to Panama but I lost the black sedes somehow. They are easy to grow but they have a shorter harvest season. Shorter than the long bean I am growing in this trial. They make up for it though with their fabulous taste and texture if quickly stir fried or prepared properly. This is why the Chinese are just enamored by them and won't grow other variety's here in Panama in their back yard. Very popular bean.
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Post by macmex on Feb 20, 2018 6:47:52 GMT -6
I wish I had a better picture of Georgia Long. But, unfortunately, I don't. That needs to go on my list for 2018. I wish Zeedman (Chris) would drop in here. He's the best authority I know on this kind of legume. If my memory serves me, I believe there are some kinds of yard longs which are even longer than Georgia Long's 2.' One time I had a cross between Georgia Long and Black Crowder. The resulting cowpea had foot long, edible pods and roughly double the seed (all black) of what Georgia Long has.
My experience with Georgia Long, is that I need to get it planted before June, if I want a good crop, especially if I want seed. It will produce faster than that. But late in the season the pods often lack much seed. When I have phaseolus vulgaris varieties in production, I almost never chose Georgia Long over them for veggies. However, we have a 6-8 week period of time, between the middle of July and the end of August, when it is so hot, that most beans shut down production. During that time, Georgia Long is a life saver! It LOVES the heat and, as long as it receives adequate moisture, it cranks out the pods.
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Post by macmex on Feb 20, 2018 7:03:00 GMT -6
Okay, here's one more picture. It's not much different from the first.
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Post by glen on Feb 20, 2018 16:07:47 GMT -6
George, since Long-bean is a cow-pea, you can grow it every year along side of your normal beans that you decide to grow. Why not grow a vining long bean every year? You said it yourself, it has a place in the garden because it puts on pods in the hottest part of the summer when the other beans are suffering. You can see the two tee-pee's I set up. They are not taking up much space at all. I planted about 20 seeds under each tee-pee and did not even thin the plants! I am now beginning to get pods forming. Long beans are not demanding much of my time or supervision either. They seem to take care of themselves. The variety I have, which is unknown, is very productive also, producing a load of pea's in each pod. We are going to see later, but I might get several big jars of putty red colored dried pea's if I just let the pods go to seed. I do agree though, regular dried beans are tastier. However, the dried feild pea's are very high in protein and good for us, and they grow during the time when much of our garden is stressed. I think of em the same as black eyed pea's. Nothing is more impervious to the heat and humidity as a black eyed pea bush. Its a survival plant that is a must have. I just need to find a source of poles that are economical to obtain for use as tee-pee's. Maybe growing them on corn stalks? Because of lack of space, I need climbing vines, not bush style bean variety's. If I had the space though, bush style feild pea's would be just fine.
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Post by glen on Feb 20, 2018 16:14:46 GMT -6
Oh, by the way, that is about the ugliest glamor foto I have ever seen. Poor fella probably wishes he had a chance to spruce up a little before his foto op. It must have been hot as holy heck or just real late in the season to cause that plant to look so shabby. But, notice the pods? Nothing can stop it.
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Post by glen on Feb 20, 2018 16:45:57 GMT -6
George, I believe you should write your friend Chris and ask him to drop in. Judging by the amount of hits we have here on this thread, the lowly field pea is not a very popular veggy in the US. In the hot south, it should be. Okra and black-eyed pea's are the only thing that can grow in the South during the hot summer my Dad used to say so both veggy's should be more popular. Cowpea's were invented in Africa from what I have read. Very few places on the planet are more hot and miserable than Panama though. I browse thru the bean isle every now and then in the super-market here looking at the bags and checking where the beans are from. Field pea's are just about the only kind of dried legumes that seem to come from Panama. I have noticed some red beans that come from a neighboring province. I have not tried them yet but I am pretty sure they are bush beans, which I don't really have room for. The most popular legume here is called chiriquina. They are a bush feild pea and they are a dull mud or faded clay colored little pea. I like em but they are nothing to look at. If you want regular dried kidney beans, most of the bags are from different country's. This tells me that beans are not easy to grow here in Panama. But, field pea's do pretty well. I plan to continue experimenting until I find a variety of bean(kidney shaped) that will grow and produce well here. In the mean-time I must make the best of my long bean which grows like the devil.
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Post by glen on Feb 21, 2018 16:57:20 GMT -6
The way my long beans are forming is that a little branch comes off a node. One at a time, the blooms form which are large and yellow. A total of 4 beans will usually form on each bearing branch but they usually do not come all at one time. The first 2 come seemingly at the same time. Then, a few days will pass and the second 2 will form. I don't think I have ever seen more than 4 pods forming on a little branch. Sometimes a bloom will just form directly off of a node. I am seeing this also. Once you cut the pods off the vines, no more pods will develop on that one branch. My variety seems to be indeterminate which means that the vines just grow continuously until insects or desease kill the vines. Eventually the vines begin to look exactly like the foto George shared with us of the Georgia Long bean. They get sad and just tired and then peter out and die. Some variety's live longer than others. For example, Thai yard long beans don't live as long as my long beans do. They are just more susceptible to the insects and the virus and eventually the white fly's. I am keeping my eye out for virus and white fly's. If I see white fly's it will be time for me to just euthanize the vines. White fly's are bigger than I. I cannot beat them. I have to try and live with them. and, that is a tall order. Same with the virus. Gotta just live with it. Long beans are a primary vector for virus and white fly.
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