The 2014 Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans On The Cheap

@Pulsegleaner I took note of what you said about the Jugo beans. I separated the red colored beans and planted them together and they came up with the funny leaves of the other ground beans. Out of a sample of Jugo-South Africa, Jugo-Botswana--only one came up looking like a cowpea or regular bean. Of the Bambarra bean sample, they all came up looking like miniature palm trees-like the Jugo ground beans! I think you have a good idea on sending more than 25 seeds back to Russ. Maybe at least a 50-50 split should be in order.
 
I never meant to imply that ALL the red ones where otherwise. There ARE read earth peas; the Nimyo picture proves that much. I merely meant that that particular specific seed in the photo looked to me more like a fat standard cowpea than an earth pea. There could have been several red seeds in that sample russ got, some earth peas, some not. You say that one of the plants looks more like a standard cowpea than an earth pea, maybe that was the one.

A 50-50 split sounds generous, but as I said, earth peas are not noted for their fecundity, so you could be looking at several to most plants only making one seed. My best advice would be to keep track of what colors each plant makes and plant to send 5 or so seeds from each one back. Maybe even send them with notes, so that they each can become a strain (so down the road, someone could say, "I want to grow the white seeded one with the black eye, the red one with the brown mottle, and the grey and silver ones (I didn't see a grey and silver one, but I believe that, as a species, Earth peas come in pretty much every color and pattern that cowpeas do, so somewhere out there should be silver ones, and mottle eyes, and blue ones. and so on)
 
What! These things only make ONE bean? Who slipped them birth control pills? :lol: I'm sending them to the fertility clinic. :\
 
Okay, get ready to throw mudpies at me, but if the earth pea can barely even sustain it's own existence, much less feed a bunch of people, what's the point of growing it? I am obviously missing something...

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Yuck, yuck, yuck! Ya'll are cracking me up!

I'm with thistlebloom here. How do you plant, eat, and still have seed for future planting if it produces only one -- or even two seeds per pod. I am a bigger eater than one measly bean at a sitting.

It's got me thinking, too, but it is just giving me a headache -- no sweat.
 
thistlebloom said:
Okay, get ready to throw mudpies at me, but if the earth pea can barely even sustain it's own existence, much less feed a bunch of people, what's the point of growing it? I am obviously missing something...

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Well...

Here in America each person or family owns one piece of property, and most gardening Americans only have a small area that they could commit to growing any sort of plant on. In Africa land ownership isn't so strict (right word there?) and a lot of people live in villages out in the middle of nowhere. There they would plant the groundnuts in huge patches, enough to get a good harvest [they have a lot of room to plant, the land belongs to all (or most) of the people so no issues].

Like a lot of different crops from the other side of the world, it is harder to incorporate them into our exact situation. I think that I worded this well enough for you to get the right Idea, although it probably could've been written (or typed) better.
 
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