SeedO's 2014-2015 Garden Journal

[britesea]

I am also looking for varieties that will grow here in Klamath County.

 

[baymule]

Google peas and you get the green peas. In the south, peas are peas, the green ones are English peas. Peas, greens and cornbread is a feast!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

For a short season cowpea, although I've tried neither, I'd have to recommend either -

Fast Lady (think that's it, bred by Carol Deppe) or "Fagiolino Dolico di Veneto" from Victory.

They sound good.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Few things

1. It's a little late now (though the info is probably going to be useful to you next year) but that spotted bug in the picture in the first post of this thread is NOT a ladybird; it's too long and too pink. Ladybugs are generally really round, almost hemispherical I don't remember what it is called, but it is another sort of cucumber beetle like insect i.e. another bad one.

2. @journey11, the reason Chickpeas prefer cool weather is that, over most of their range, they are winter crops. You sow them in the fall, let them grow over the winter (in the subtropics, winter is still well above freezing) and harvest them in the early spring. It's actually kind of common in crops from around there, or why there are so many thing I can't really grow well because their day length needs have them flowering in the middle of December.

3. To give a little background, the brown eyes peas I gave seedobessor came from a kind of bean mixture I can pick up at the Korean supermarket, called "Heathy Bean Mix". Besides the cowpeas (I know you don't like that term, baymule, but we don't seem to have another collective term that covers ALL the varieties of the species (all of your terms are for specific types or strains) and as you see I can't use peas as is in this thread) there are also common (i.e. English) peas, chickpeas both Kabouli (big sort) and Desi (small hard) types (actually the chickpeas themselves are rather interesting. Besides having both types together, some of those Kabouli's in there are HUGE; the size of favas when they are soaked) black soybeans, red kidney bean like beans and a sprinkling of huge white beans that are either giant limas or white runners (i.e. Gigantes). The brown eyes are actually sort of an off type of the type that makes up the majority of the cowpeas, which is a mottled eye (clay and mocha marbled, sometimes with a orange note around the edge of the ring or a green one near the hilum). I don't have any of them around now, the critters dug them all up and ate them (which given that I put about three or four pounds of seed in astonished me, normally with that much, a few get through) but getting more is simply a matter of a trip to H-mart.
I wish you luck, britesea, but it can be tricky to grow cowpeas as for north as us. Most strains are just too long season. Out of all of the cowpeas and yard long beans I have tossed in my garden (and there have been a LOT) I think only 5-6 ever made seed (and that's 5-6 plants not 5-6 strains) all from my bag pull outs. Three are black seeded. At least one of those is actually black ON black (it has a black seedcoat, but I know from seeing some half ripe seeds in a pod the animals pulled down it's black eyed too) all with similar short structure bicolored flowers and short pods. They differ mostly in pod color and thickness, one was skinny and purple on was medium thickness and green and one was plump and white, Out of all of them now except the white and I only have 9 of those for my own use (might still have the green).
One is a very tiny mottled seeded one. Of all of them this one has done the best as it is the only one to have worked two years in a row (there was a similar plant the first year with a mottled eye coat, but that one's seeds came off a little immature, and none regrew.) and produces very nicely, but the seeds are a little small for most uses (as are the pods)
The sixth is one plant of that yard long I mentioned in the year long thread. Alas I don't have seed for that either since the od came in short and I though it was one of the green podded ones and picked it WAAY to soon (the immature pods of that are more or less the same shade of pale green that the green one gets when it is ripening. I'd say Seeds advice on types is as good as any.

 

[baymule]

@Pulsegleaner I concede to the term cowpeas so that we are all on the same page here. That is but one of the many colloquial differences in the different regions of the country. Cowpeas it is!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

If it makes you feel any better, until earlier this year, I was calling them all crowder peas, because I thought that was just a synonym. I though maybe some guy named Crowder had introduced them to the south (or, given we are talking antebellum times, convinced white Southerners that there was no stigma in eating a veggie previously reserved only for the slaves who brought it over with them from Africa.) Then someone explained to me that a "crowder" is in fact a cowpea whose seeds are flattened on the ends due to being "crowded" very closely inside the pods (for the record the equivalent term for an English pea is a chenille or "caterpillar" pea.).
At least we are only dealing with two. previously I've had to explain the difference between pigeon peas the bean ( a very small seeded fava) from pigeon peas the legume (a shrubby topical crop used mostly in Asia and the Carribean) from pigeon peas the pea (in some parts of England, hard starch old type soup peas, like Maple and Carlin are called pigeon peas.) Or Horse beans (the smallish to medium fava) from Horse beans (the large seed tropical forbs of the genus Canavalia) from horse gram (the tiny seeds of Dolicos biflorus) Or that asparagus peas are not in fact peas ( as a member of the genus Lotus )(no they aren't related to the flower lotus, that's Nelumbo) their closest relative someone in this country would know intimately is birds foot trefoil (that little crawly roadside weed legume with the bright yellow flowers).

 

[britesea]

And THAT is why serious horticulturists only use the latin names....

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Well, more accurately, you'd need to use the Binomial AND a common name, since most horticultural seed is already down to the variety, so just the species name isn't enough, since all of the varieties are going to have the same one. Plus even those tends to change pretty frequently, as genera and species are compressed and extender by splitters and lumpers. And outdated names are often held onto in horticulture for a long time after they have been replaced (for example the rice beans I play around with so much are either Phaseolus calcaratus or Vigna umbellata, depending on how old the reference is (the second is currently in favor)

Actually I keep remembering what some fellow Taxonomist said to me once, that eventually, the binomial will no longer be the official scientific form of recognition. As soon as the technology gets sufficiently advanced (basically when printed matter becomes completely obsolete and ALL information is transmitted and stored virtually so the limit's of "what can an average human remember easily" no longer really apply) he thinks the standard will be to actually provide the clade tree for any species being described, or even their complete DNA sequence, as the method of identification. And I honesly can't say that he is wrong, or that that wouldn't be a good idea.