What is your take on Crowder peas?

Basil
Sweet
Dark Opal
Genovese
Lemon
Purple Petra
Compact

Beans
Anasazi Beans
Asparagus Beans
Black
Bluelake Stringless
Bush Slenderette
Frank Barnette Cutshort
Kentucky Wonder Pole
Kidney
Pinto
Rattlesnake
Woods Mountain Crazy Bean

Corn
Early Golden Bantam
Green
Strawberry

Cukes
Boston Pickling
Bush Champion
Cross-Country Hybrid
Marketmore 76

Gourds
Birdhouse
Luffa
Spoon

Melons/Canteloupes
Sierra Gold Canteloupe
Sugar Baby Watermelon
Swt & Early Canteloupe
Thai Baby Watermelon
Petite Yellow Watermelon

Okra
Heavy Hitter
Zeebest

Peppers/Chili
Anaheim
California Wonder Bell
Cayenne Ring o' Fire
Cayenne Long Slender
Hungarian Sweet Banana
Medusa
Rainbow Mix Bells
Serrano
Sweet Banana

Squash
Burgess Buttercup
Bush Table King
Trombocini
Summer Crookneck (VERY early before the convention arrives)
The French Squash I received

Sweet Potatoes
Unknown, but they're good

Tobacco
Unknown Variety

I'll be lucky if I get to all this, but it's plan "A".

Wow Dawn
Ok here we go

amaranthus golden giant
amaranthus iilumination
bean black
bean blue lake
bean blue lake bush
bean contender
bean greencrop
bean purple pod
beans ?
corn mandan bride
corn mix red broom
corn sweet
cucumber
cucumber armenian
cucumber homemade pickles
cucumber lemon
cucumber muncher
cucumber national pickling
cucumber sumter
eggplant
okra
pea blackeye
pepper black hungarian
pepper calif wonder orange
pepper cayenne
pepper grand bell
pepper hungarian yellow
pepper jalapeno
pepper jimmy nardellos
pepper purple beauty
pepper sweet cherry
popcorn
pumpkin connecticut
pumpkin jack o lantern
pumpkin sugar
radish
radish black spanish
squash acorn
squash butternut
squash cushaw wintergreen
squash round zuccini
squash zuccini
canteloupe
melon ?
melon charentais
melon crenshaw
watermelon bush sugar baby
watermelon crimson sweet
strawberries
Sweet potato assortment probably 50 slips
oh and some sort of white potato for my son, I cant eat them.
so far so good. Again many of these I am not planting a lot just 1 or 2 to try them.

kim

Great list Bon. I am shooting high this year, but I am tired of paying high prices for organic produce plus gas to run 200 miles to get it. I've got 2 freezers now so I am ready!
kim

Prices? me too ! may we be packing our freezers this year.

Tomatoes on the other thread.

Kim, I almost did Golden Giant Amaranth! Let me know how it does! And the black Spaniish radish!

I have a lot of herbs and flowers and alpine strawberries, too.

Amaranth
Red Garnert

Beans, Pole
Frank Barnett Cut Short

Beans, Bush
Woods Mountain Crazy Bean
Contender

Beans, Yard Long. Cow Pea
pink eye, purple hull
Green Pod Red Seed

Cucumber
Lemon
Paris pickling
Homemade Pickles
Straight 8

Eggplant
Rosa Bianca

Greens
aurora orach
Malabar Spinach
Melokhiya

Melons
Valencia Winter Melon
Ananas

Okra
Heavy Hitter
burgandy
Green Velvet

Peppers, Sweet
Buran
Calif Wonder
Jimmy Nardello Italian

Peppers, Hot
Mild Jalapeno
Jalapeno Early
Czechoslovakian black pepper

Pumpkins
Seminole

Squash, Summer
Partenon f1
Patty Pan?
Grey Zuchinni?
Tromboncino?

Squash, Winter
REBA acorn hybrid
Black Futsu
Scarchuk's Supreme Acorn?
Waltham Butternut?

Watermellons
Sugar Baby

Sweet Potatoes
?I haven't picked these yet either

Ground Cherries
Cossack Pineapple

Johnny,

I love crowder peas and think Americans should eat more of them. They're just as strong and resilient in our worst heat and drought as the more popular southern peas like pink eye purple hulls, zipper, lady and cream peas but just try finding any fresh ones in the grocery story in the summer----it isn't going to happen! So, we grow our own.

I do wonder if there is some inherent bias against them because a lot of them are dark in color and also cook up a dark "gravy" when cooked. (Cornbread exists to soak up the gravy, does it not?) I also think their crowded, sort of smushed-in, sometimes dimpled appearance is not as appealing to some folks as the more normal-looking other types of southern peas. This kind of reminds me of the way some people don't like cutshort beans because they look "funny". I always suggest they just taste them instead of hating on them because they don't look "right".

Nothing ever will take the place of crowders in my garden, although my favorite southern peas likely always will be Pink Eye Purple Hull. I could plant only PEPH varieties and be happy, but do try to add a crowder, lady, zipper or cream pea to my list every year. I like watching for some of the more obscure ones at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Heavenly Seed, Willhite Seed or Baker Creek Heirloom Seed. I'm not sure about the others, but I know Willhite and SESE sell bulk seed of their various southern peas for folks with larger gardens.

I like my southern peas of all types harvested green, so I spend an inordinate amount of time in the summer sitting with a bowl of southern peas in my lap shelling them. (It takes me back to my childhood and evenings spent sitting on the front porch shelling peas with the porch light on and moths crashing into the screen door while seeking the light.) If I liked the southern peas in their drier stage, I'd buy a pea sheller and leave them on the plants longer and harvest them when they were dry enough to go through the sheller without being smashed/crushed to death. A Farmer's Market near my hometown always had a pea sheller running on weekends, shelling any sort of southern pea that a shopper had just purchased. To me, a sheller is one of those old-timey southern farm things that is disappearing in this day and age when so many people just buy canned or dry southern peas in packages at the store.

If I was growing southern peas for a food bank, I'd grow crowders for sure, and I'd harvest them after they were dry enough for the sheller to shell them. I don't know of anything that gives a better return in the dead of summer than all types of southern peas, including crowders. Depending on what sort of soil they're growing in and how well it holds moisture, you often don't even have to water them at all. Even in 2011, my southern peas produced well, given the circumstances, which at our house (and at many others in OK that year) included no rainfall for almost 3 months and high temperatures over 100 degrees for around 90-100 consecutive days. They did wilt when we were hitting 110-115 every day, but so did everything else, including this gardener.

Do y'all grow crowders for the food bank? I think they would be an important part of your crop rotation, especially since you can just rototill the spent plants into the ground for soil improvement after the harvest is over.

Oh, I guess harvesting tons of them by hand would be labor intensive, but so are a lot of other crops.

Usually, when I harvest southern peas, I don't process the different types separately. I just shell them all together and cook them and eat them all together. I do the same thing with snap peas and shellies. I like having diversity on my dinner plate. Some folks don't like to mix together all their peas, but I grow too many different varieties for me to sit there and harvest them and shell them and process them all separately. I'd never sleep.

Remember, too, that all southern peas can be used to make pea hull jelly, which is one of those wonderful, tasty jellies that people cannot believe came from a waste product like pea hulls. My favorite, though, is from Pink Eye Purple Hulls. I've never made pea hull jelly from crowders as I generally grow less of them.

I grow all of my vining type southern peas on the garden fences, so I occasionally lose a pea pod or leaf here or there to the nibbling deer, but not as often as a person would think. My favorite way to plant vining types of southern peas is to leave the last harvest on the vines and to leave the vines on the fences all winter long. When I yank down the spent vines at soil preparation time, the remaining pods split open and the peas fall to the ground. The next season's crop just pops up on its own without any planting action on my part. I've kept Red Ripper peas going for years that way, and hope to do the same with the calico crowders. We'll see if the pine voles allow that. Last year they ate the roots of every type of bush southern pea I grew, at the rate of one plant per night beginning some time in July. They preferred PEPHs to all others, and their favorite was Mackey. They ate all of my Mackey plants before they moved on to other varieties. They didn't bother Red Ripper or Colossus at all.

Dawn

Amy I will. The black radish I got in that 2 cent seed deal and I am growing to give away, I don't eat them. If they grow someone will be happy since I have a lot of seed.
Some of my stuff I am growing for chickens and pig we will be getting soon.
I like all red and purple foods to me they just taste better Bon maybe its that craving what we need kickin in.
All this talk about peas is making me hungry. Hopefully by summer I will be able to tolerate peas again. I will probably grow some for a friend who is having surgery and wont be able to get a garden in this year.

I also have ground cherries but they sow themselves. Last year I missed harvesting them when I got sick, there are dozens, maybe hundreds. Most of them will be sown over with grasses but I want to let a 10x10 area grow.
kim

Oh and peanuts they grow great here!

Dawn,

Thanks again. I like Crowders because they produce more peas per pod. We bought an electric pea sheller last year. We sold PEPH shellies for $8 per quart last year at the farmers market. Almost paid for the sheller and gave A BUNCH away.

We plan to plant about an acre of PEPH and an acre of pole beans for our U-PICK-IT effort. We will be charging $.25 per gallon. If you donate half of what you pick to the food bank, your half is free.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden for the food bank.

Sigh, now I have to research all those summer peas Dawn is talking about. I'm a 1st generation Okie raised by Minnesotans, only canned black eyed peas (New Years Day) in my child hood. And dad's tradition for New Years was oyster stew, not a fav of mine. My plan is to grow cowpeas on a spot of unbroken ground, in the grass, like Larry did. Then mow it down and plant winter wheat. It's a spot I can't till because there are cables buried there. But it is full sun and prime garden real estate.

Kim, I don't like radishes, and I've heard the black ones are HOT, but I love unusual stuff, like black food, LOL. Next year salsify is on my wish list.