Hi Mark,

The part of your garden featured in the photos looks great.

You harvest them when the peas are filled out and you can tell that there are plump little peas in the pods. You can harvest them while the pods are still green (or after they've turned mostly purple if you're growing the purple hull pink eye types) or you can let the pods turn yellow and harvest them as dry beans. I prefer to harvest when they are in the green stage. You can harvest them at any stage between green and plump to yellow and dry.

One way to test a couple is to pick them and attempt to shell them. If the 'test' pod opens easily and the peas are fully formed and easy to pop out of the pod, they're ready. If you have a hard time getting the pod to open and getting the peas out, you've harvested too early and should wait a few more days before you begin harvesting. With each variety, you'll learn exactly the pod color and degree of plumpness that tells you the peas are ready. I have a neighbor who loves them so much that he picks them too early every year even though he knows better!

I generally recommend Pinkeye Purple Hull southern peas to first-time pea growers because they turn purple as they mature, so all you have to do is wait for them to turn purple.

I like to cook my southern peas the old southern way by boiling/simmering them for about 45 minutes in a pot of water to which I've added some bacon or salt pork for flavoring. I salt and pepper them to taste. Usually, I'll chop up a little onion and add it to the pot, and sometimes add a chopped jalapeno pepper as well.

Blackeyed peas fall in the southern pea category, which includes blackeyed peas, purple hull pinkeye peas, lady peas, zipper peas, cream peas and crowder peas. All of them are grown and prepared the same way. If you were raised in the south, it is pretty much mandatory that you serve them with fresh cornbread hot from the oven.

Some southern peas are bush-types and some are pole-types, but even the bush types tend to act like half-runner pole beans and will climb whatever is nearby. They'll stay shorter and more well-behaved if there is nothing to climb, but if there is something even remotely nearby they'll stretch and reach for it and climb it. One year I had pinkeye purple hull peas cross the pathway between their bed and a tomato bed. They then climbed to the top of the tomato cages. Counting the space they crawled horizontally, those plants were about 10' in length, and they were not a pole type. However, the ones that were too far from anything to climb reached maybe 24 or 30" in height. My favorite southern pea, at least in terms of growth, is one known either as Mandy or Big Red Ripper. It will run on the ground or climb for up to 18-20'.

I'm going to link a Pink Eye Purple Hull website because it has lots of great info on pinkeye purple hull peas. Its' info and recipes are fine for all types of southern peas, not just purple hull pink eye types. There are a lot of great recipes for southern peas on this website. Just substitute your peas for purple hull peas.

And, just as an FYI, you can make pea hull jelly from the hulls after you've hulled the peas. Each type of pea hull jelly has its own unique flavor and color.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Recipes At Purplehull.com

Thanks Dawn for the information. I was not raised in the south, but love southern food. We moved here 12 years ago from Denver and it took a long time to adjust to gardening here.

Mark

Mark,

You're welcome.

I grew up in Texas, which is perhaps a bit more southwestern than southern, but I love southern cooking too.

My husband grew up in Pennsylvania, but we've made a southerner out of him and it really didn't take too long.

Gardening here requires a big adjustment no matter where you've lived and gardened before. I grew up and lived in Fort Worth my whole life, so only about 80 miles south of where I live now, and it even was a fairly big adjustment for me because the cold nights and freezes hang on much later in the spring here. Also, in Fort Worth I never had over a foot of rain in one day. Oklahoma weather sure likes to keep us guessing. About the time I'm thinking we've seen it all, the weather throws something new at us. I guess it keeps us on our toes.

Dawn

Well, I am from:
Ft Worth, TX
Wilson, OK
Lone Grove OK
Durant OK
Denison TX
Anchorage AK
near Marquette MI
Athens, Greece
Denver CO
Colorado Springs CO
Anchorage AK
Wasilla AK
Norman OK
Dayton OH
Lone Grove OK
Grove OK
I think this is my 29th house and hope to never move again.

Now you guys know why I am so confused.