#field peas

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Late July and my beans are just starting to run.

I planted them pretty late, and it's a new garden, so I think I'll still get plenty to eat or of this little patch! They keep producing until frost most years.

[protoslacker]

Enslaved Africans brought field peas from their homeland. Given those fraught origins, it’s hard to imagine how or why eating field peas came to be associated with good luck on New Year’s Day, but they are said to represent coins, just as leafy greens represent folding money. It is even more of a mystery why ubiquitous black-eyed peas, mostly canned at that, are the only type of field pea that many people know. Jeff Ross, head gardener at the legendary Blackberry Farm in eastern Tennessee, describes black-eyed peas as the red delicious apple of the pea world: the most popular is not the same as the best.

The Editors at The Local Palate. A Field Guide to Field Peas

I'm a white guy like lots of white guys has been Africanized in one way an another. I look forward to Black HIstory Month because I feel so grateful for the myriad ways thea Black people and Black culture have shaped my life.. And one small but important way is I eat field peas.

[mumblelard]

fresh shelled crowders and lady peas simmered in homemade stock. they turned out well, but the old church ladies would have to tease me for not shelling them myself

[logwire]

a field pea city

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

My garden is an overgrown mess, but it still does this

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

I feel like I may be accidentally selecting for hulls on my field peas that are harder to see.

A lot of cultivars of Vigna unguiculata* have hulls that turn purple when they're mature, but before they start to dry out. Purple hull and pink eyed peas are two common varieties like that, and it makes them real easy to spot for harvesting. Other kinds stay green, or maybe just go a little paler/yellower when they're ready, and those you have to hunt for among the leaves.

I don't know what varieties I started out with, but there's at least two normal-sized kinds in the mix, and hull color varies among them both. I never get every pod picked at the optimal time, but the ones I miss dry well on the vine, so I just pick them when I do find them, and put those dried bean in a jar to plant next year. Which means, as far as my unnatural selection, that the ones that don't turn a convenient color when they're ready have an advantage. They're more likely to get 'selected' for propagation (i.e. forgotten & then found later), as long as they produce well enough to be statistically significant in the seed jar.

Beans are pretty stable over the planting generations, as they mostly pollinate themselves, but they do produce crop-outs from time to time (like my exciting new fat variety - I'll do a post about them soon), so the color may drift over time. I've been growing these from my own saved seeds for ~10 years, and at least some of them are still purple (maybe half? maybe less), but then I don't really know what I started with, so idk if they've changed. I could start taking more notes, I guess.

*This species includes all the field peas, cowpeas, black eyed, purple hull, lady peas, Sea Island red peas, and a hundred other cultivars of similar beans. I call all those field peas, as a general term. Yardlong beans are also in this species, and some other Asian varieties I'm not as familiar with. Crowder peas, too.

Now, some people (and google) seem to think that crowder peas and field peas are the same thing, and they're wrong. Similar, yes. Closely related, yes. Cooked about the same, also yes. A crowder pea might even be considered a type of field pea, but not every field pea is a crowder. They crowd together in the pod, see, and it changes the shape of the pea, leaving an indent where the next one pushed up against it.

Proper crowder peas:

vs. ordinary purple hulls:

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Garden scenes, late May 2022

Everything's GREEN and GROWING. Potatoes blooming, first cherry tomatoes ripening, beans beginning to climb, raindrops on the leaves.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Garden log 6/13/23

New plantings!

Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum) inside the garden fence, southwest corner. Will need to keep watered in summer, but this spot is wet in winter/spring, so I hope they'll do well once established. Added composted manure from the back pile, as the soil is poor there.

And swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius) by the drive gate, where it's rarely dry. Little picket fence to mark it while it gets established, & protect from the mower. Added only grass mulch. Both from neighborhood plant swap. Watered in well.

New row of butter beans, with composted manure over hoed up soil. Beans soaked ~6 hours before planting. Been watered twice since.

Field pea vigor comparison. Leftmost: white ones. Middle: fatties. Right: standard purple hull. Varieties change at the fence posts. The two wimpy varieties are in a little more shade, thought still seems like plenty of sun, and they get a lot of dust kicked up onto them from the chickens bathing right outside that fence line. But the soil should be about the same, so idk. Perhaps I'll give them some compost, or make manure tea.

Look at my pretty bean babies grabbing onto their new supports. Go beans go!

Also watered the pussywillows. All are still alive (even the one I weed whacked), though growing slower than I'm used to with black willow. Perhaps this is normal.