The first planting of Pinkeye Purple Hull peas are setting pods and I harvested the first handful tonight. I like growing purple hulls better than black eye peas, partly because their changing pod color makes it easier for me to tell when to harvest them. You harvest the pods when they are beginning to change from green to purple. These are 56 days old, and the seed to harvest date is listed at 85 days. I will continue harvesting and shelling as I go and I hope to get a few meals out of these. The pea aphids have been pretty bad so I don't expect much.
Peas are sprawling all out of bed.
Here are some pods that are not quite ready
Here is the batch I picked tonight
Here are the shelled peas
7 comments:
Beautiful peas! I haven't had any home grown ones in a long time--since my grandmother died.
Thanks Cristy, I love good ol' field peas too. My favorite are white acre peas, they have been super hard to find at the vegetable market this summer because of the drought. I think I have figured out this year that field peas don't do well in square foot gardening. I might try growing some white acre peas next year in traditional rows. They go for about 28 dollars a bushel shelled around here, and I am pretty sure I can't grow a bushel for that cheap.
Those are some nice looking peas, I'd like to put them in a pot with some nice smoked ham hocks..and make a pot of rice on the side (or maybe right along with them:o)
I like purple hulls, but my favorite peas are White Acre peas. I got two bushels from the farmers market this week to put up in my freezer. I like cooking mine with kielbasa sausage, butter, and salt simmered for about 40 minutes. There just ain't nothing better than that. I am drying some of the seeds now, and I hope to plant some white acres next year. My maw maw used to make them with fatback and they were so good that way too.
Thank you so much for these photos and instructions.
Your photos are the ONLY ones on the web-and they are priceless in that to describe a color is not the same as seeing a color!
I now know that my purple hull peas (1st time growing) are not QUITE ready. I need to wait for more uniform purple coloring.
No problem, glad the photos were helpful to you.
I know this is an old conversation, but caught my eye because I am seriously considering changing my garden method from traditional row crop in the ground to a series of large raised beds. My garden area is fenced in 90 ft wide x 100 ft long, but the land is not well drained. I have worked many years to improve the soil with tons of crushed leaves and it has worked, but not enough. My plan is to grade the area flat and build a network of raised beds 3 ft wide x 16 ft long x 2 ft tall and fill these structures with good garden soil I will buy. I plan to have mowable lawn between these raised beds. The question in all these words is I want to grow enough purple hull field peas to harvest and pressure can around 50 qts per year. I have done this before with row gardening, but due to the not well drained poor soil there are many things that can impair my harvest. Have you seen anyone grow field peas in raised beds on this scale? Thanks
Post a Comment