|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 1, 2021 15:53:08 GMT -6
I have some new raised beds that we were recently given, and my husband and I have been working hard to fill them in a mini-hugelkultur style. We are topping off the piles of brush and rotten wood with any nitrogen sources we have available and then finished compost. My plan is to cover crop them for what remains of the summer (which could really be four months at this point), and I wanted to grow nitrogen-fixing plants.
My two summer cover crop seeds that I have on hand are Whippoorwill cowpeas and Sunn Hemp. I’ve never grown either before. My beds are each about four feet wide and ten feet long. I was thinking of doing two ten foot rows of cowpeas at the outer sides of the bed with one row of Sunn Hemp in the middle. I have read in a couple of places not to soak cowpeas before planting. I usually soak green beans overnight before I plant, and that has worked really well for me. I don’t sprout them, just an overnight soak. Is there a particular reason to avoid this with cowpeas? I know they like heat, but it’s really hard to keep the top inch of soil moist in summer in Texas, so I’d like to give them a head start if I can.
I’m actually hoping that I’ll be able to plant this weekend. My husband and I have plans to put up our fencing. We’ll see how that goes.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 3, 2021 6:24:55 GMT -6
I decided to soak a batch overnight last night. The forecast calls for a chance of showers this afternoon, and I don’t want to miss that window. It’s light outside. I need to get out there and start working.
|
|
|
Post by hmoosek on Jul 3, 2021 22:10:55 GMT -6
Although I’ve never done it, I can’t see how it would hurt. I generally just plant mine, give the soil a good soaking and wait.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 4, 2021 6:14:46 GMT -6
Thanks for chiming in. I did an overnight soak for them, then planted them and gave the soil another good soaking (helped out by a small shower in the late afternoon), and now I’m waiting. After I got the seeds all planted and loosely covered, my kind husband got out the mulching mower and made me some chopped leaf mulch. He sprinkled it very lightly over the bare soil to help protect it. I will admit that I’m terribly excited about growing cowpeas.
We started work on our fence but didn’t get very far before there was nearby thunder, and we both had work we had to do inside anyway. I think the fencing will be priority number one on Monday.
|
|
|
Post by rdback on Jul 5, 2021 8:07:41 GMT -6
Like HMK, I don't soak cowpeas before planting but I don't see how it could hurt.
Whippoorwill has been around a long time (Jefferson grew it at Monticello) and is a fine cowpea. I think there's a few imposters out there now. The real deal should be a dark tan or brown color with speckles. Pretty seed. It's also a viner, to 5 or 6 feet or more.
I think you'll like it, if you like cowpeas lol.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 5, 2021 17:18:25 GMT -6
Thanks for that link. I love black-eyed peas personally, so I think I’ll like them.
I will admit that the reason I chose Whippoorwill as the particular cowpea for my cover crop (in addition to being able to get a larger size of seed packet for a good price) was for pure nostalgia. I grew up on a small farm in Jefferson country in central Virginia in an area called “Whippoorwill Hollow.” My mom still lives and gardens there. If I could choose where to live, it would be there.
The seeds I planted on Saturday were small but a very pretty reddish brown with speckles. I understand the name. I’m planning to let some of the peas ramble on each other, but we plan to put up cattle panel arches to let them climb, too. I’m interested to see how they will interact with the Sunn Hemp, whether they’ll climb that or just overwhelm it. The Sunn Hemp won the sprouting contest, though. I was shocked to find it up this morning. Maybe it knew it needed to get a head start.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 7, 2021 23:19:32 GMT -6
I used to custom grow requested vegetables for local area chefs. Chuck Ray requested black eyed peas. He wanted them harvested about kitchen matchstick diameter, before they get 'knobby.' They'd be about 4" inches long by then. He paid me $8.00 per pound for them. It would take a lot of matchstick sized peas to make a pound, so it was labor intense. He used them as garnish on whole sliced brisket. He'd lay them like shoe laces across the top of the brisket after it was sliced, then sprinkle the finished product with minced onions and steam it.
I had never seen peas used that way before. They make incredibly tender presentations.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 8, 2021 18:44:34 GMT -6
Wow. That does sound labor intensive. I wonder if the people eating the brisket had any idea what those match-stick thickness pods were.
My cowpeas have sprouted mostly. In one of the three beds they’re only up in one corner. The new beds aren’t in full sun, so it may be a temperature difference. It’s also possible that seeds got washed down deeper or to a different spot as from Monday night to Tuesday afternoon we had over four inches of pounding rain. It’s been nice not to have to water the garden this week.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 8, 2021 21:17:21 GMT -6
Everything chuck served there looked like it was fit for a King. He garnished everything. I once walked into the kitchen with an armload of veggies too see everyone gathered around a counter, coating a couple hundred individual green and red table grapes with soft goat cheese, sprinkling each one of them with confectioner's sugar, then stacking them into a pyramid on a round, glass cake pedestal. This was just made as a center piece. The whole layout was incredible looking! I saw him out in the back parking lot once, smoking three whole, 100 pound pigs at the same time. He had a smoker made from two huge propane tanks, welded together in a 'T' shape. He had been there all night long, basting them and baby sitting the fire, just getting things ready for lunch that day. I loved watching the cooks working on things there, it was like watching artists at work.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 15, 2021 14:45:41 GMT -6
Some of the Whippoorwill Cowpeas have gotten tall enough to start climbing the trellises. These two did it without any guidance or help from me, though I have been helping some others along. They are definitely growing more vigorously than the Sunn Hemp in the same beds.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 15, 2021 16:39:57 GMT -6
Those Whiporwill Peas sound like some happy-making plants have around!
|
|
|
Post by macmex on Aug 17, 2021 8:23:51 GMT -6
I've sometimes wondered if they didn't call them Whippoorwill because one plants them during the time that the whippoorwill sings. Before it sings, it's probably a bit too cool for cowpeas and after the whippoorwill stops singing, which for me was about a week or two ago, it's too late to be planting them for a seed harvest. The only real hole in my theory is that this is true for all cowpeas.
This year I missed out on planting any cowpeas. It's been the hardest gardening year of my life, and that, mainly because of my own health issues. But next year... next year I'm counting on grown lots of them as well as a whole lot more tomatoes.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 17, 2021 23:30:38 GMT -6
That's a really good observation. I've never thought of that before. Now that you've mentioned it, I've noticed that the Whipowills have stopped singing. They're still around though. I see them at dusk, diving in and out of the goose pen, looking for mosquitoes over the water trough.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 18, 2021 5:37:50 GMT -6
Sadly I don’t hear Whippoorwills in this part of Texas. They don’t breed here, and I think we’re just outside even their migratory range. I was under the impression that the name came from the fact that the bean is small and speckled as the bird is small and speckled. I don’t know if that is just speculation that gets repeated but when I first saw the bean, I thought it made sense. The link has good pictures of whippoorwills. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Whip-poor-will/overviewEdited to add: I just had my seed bin out of the refrigerator, and I put a few Whippoorwill cowpeas on a plate to show how small and speckled they are. I put my pinky nail in for comparison, and my pinky nail isn’t very big. The cowpeas are definitely “happy-making” plants as heavyhitterokra says. Some of them are now taller than I am. (They are in raised beds, but I figure they have roots, so I measure both my height and the plant’s height from ground level.). It’s nice to have something growing vigorously in the August heat. Edited to add: Yes, these are definitely happy-making plants. I was just out in the garden to get some vegetables for later today, and I decided to guide some cowpea vines in different directions. While doing so, I saw the first blossom. It was just so beautiful in the filtered light that I had to take a picture. I found an unopened bud, and it looks like they are yellow on the outside and white and pale lavender on the inside. So pretty!
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 4, 2021 11:29:35 GMT -6
I ate a little bowl of cowpeas today. Yum!
Last weekend my husband and I chopped and dropped a number of the plants that weren’t trellised. We left the roots in the soil and buried the stems and foliage after chopping it with a lawnmower. We wanted to have part of the beds to try a fall crop of potatoes. We left the cowpeas that were growing up the trellises, though. Some of them have reached six or seven feet by now. I really love their beautiful flowers.
As of this morning a few pods had started to dry a bit, so I picked just a handful and shelled them out with my girls. The seeds had started to lose their moisture, but they hadn’t dried thoroughly. I just wanted to see how long they’d take to cook up, so I simmered them for about fifteen minutes. I used too much water because I was expecting to have to simmer the drying ones for longer, but it still made a beautiful dark pink broth. I seasoned simply with salt, butter, and a little whole milk (the way my mother always fed us black-eyed peas or succotash on bread when I was little), and I thoroughly enjoyed my little bowl. Everybody in the family got a spoonful and seemed to like them well enough. I figure I’ll have some trial and error in figuring out the best time to harvest the pods, but it was a fun experiment this morning.
|
|