I planted all my cow peas different varieties very close hope it works well. Right now I am having to use sprinkler yuk because I have 29 rows and one drip line. I have TX cream pea, peph and 4 kinds of black eye. I hope they do well. I need a big harvest from these

Big Red Ripper lives up to its name. In my back garden, in sandy/silty soil in drought, they climb to the top of the 8' fence and cascade back down to the ground again. I know they easily can grow 15-18' tall/long if they have adequate moisture. Their pods also are very long.

Haricots Rouge Burkina de Faso do need a trellis. If you don't give them one, they'll climb all over each other trying to find a trellis and they'll climb everything in their path.

Whippoorwill--yes, I trellis them. When I thought I'd let them sprawl sort of like half-runners, they didn't like it so they crossed the path and climbed to the top of 8' tall tomato cages (which still had tomato plants in them).

Zipper Cream--I've never trellised them but they will climb some nearby things like zinnias or whatever.

Kim, Once they are established you shouldn't have to water a lot. Most southern peas are fairly drought tolerant once established. Haricots Burkina Rouge de Faso is bulletproof I think it could survive on no irrigation, and Red Ripper isn't far behind. I don't water cowpeas very much at all, no matter what the weather is doing but, of course, they'll produce better with either rainfall or irrigation.

Dawn

My experience with growing these is that they are kinda vining bushes. I plant in rows and then run 3 ft. wire from the base of the row upward at an angle. Once the other side is done - they're growing in a little "V". (I hope that made sense). This way they're easier to keep in check and harvest. I'm about to plant Pink Eye purple hulls. If no one has mentioned it.....({{{{snicker}}}}}} Dawn?) save and freeze your pea pods!!! Jelly can be made from them! True story. I've made a couple of them. I'll go find the website for purplehulls:

http://www.purplehull.com/PurpleHulls.htm

There's info about all the other southern (cowpeas) peas there too. Good luck!

Paula

Well, the zippers are planted on the south side of the bush bean bed. The whippoorwills are on the north side, and I could easily put a cattle panel arch there. The red rippers are planted on the north side of the squash bed. They just have to play nice with the cucumbers on the east side. There will be two cattle panels there, arching over to a tomato bed, which I thought might use the arch, too. I put Penny Rile on the south side of the squash arch on the north edge of the parsnips. They can battle it out with Korean squash at the top, LOL. The Haricots Rouge Burkina du Faso are on the east and west edges of the tomato bed with the arch over it. I hope they shade the tomatoes when it gets hot.

I've planted Kentucky Red and Zongozotla Pintitos cowpeas, as well as Georgia Long, which I hardly count, since I use it like a snap bean. My experience is, that even Penny Rile, which is billed as a more compact vine, will climb to at least 9', if given something to climb. I'm trying to plant and use cowpeas as a living mulch in the garden this year, squeezing them in, wherever I think I can fit them. I figure I can always cut the vines and feed to my rabbits, if it gets too crowded.

You've piqued my interest on Georgia Long. I already had Kentucky Red on my Things to try list. Googling Zongozotla Pintitos only brought up your posts. Penny Rile was taller than me last year. I was considering using it for the living mulch experiment, too.

Last year, I planted Lady Peas and they got a horrible aphid infestation. Are they more prone to aphids or was it just by chance? They grew in decent soil. Could it have had too much nitrogen?

With all southern peas, even the ones that are short and bushy, I think that if there is anything they can climb, they will. Some of the short and bushy ones might not get get 4 or 5' tall---they won't climb endlessly---but they can get taller than you expect. They sort of remind me of half-runner beans. Some half-runner beans climb as high as regular pole beans if there is something to climb. It doesn't make much sense because there's nothing halfway about the way they are running and vining, but it is what is is.

When I've grown Lady peas, I did not notice they were prone to aphids, but to be fair---I almost never have aphids anywhere in my garden, so I'm not a good example. There is a cowpea aphid that loves cowpeas, and some people I know swear that the aphids come in the seeds (which, lol, we know is not true) because every time they plant cowpeas, they get the aphids. However, my friends who have a persistent aphid issue on cowpeas are getting pink or red aphids, not the black cowpea aphid (which has gray nymphs).

I don't remember them being black. I'm pretty sure they were yellow. I went back and looked at the pictures I took, it was mostly the white ghost shells by then. A few yellow specks were out of focus. Do they over winter? I just planted some in the same bed. There was garlic there before.

Amy, Georgia Long is a yard long bean. I don't really know if there's any real difference between it and a regular red seeded yard long.. I've been growing this one since around 1987, when I received seed from Virgil and Hazel Johnson of Liberty, MO. of the Seeds Savers Exchange. Right off I put some seed into the hands of my wife's grandparents, Albert and Cora Swalley, of Salem, IL. They grew it from then until they could no longer garden. I grew it in Los Remedios, Tasquillo, Hidalgo, Mexico from the mid 90s until we returned to the US in 2001. We then grew it in NJ and, upon starting a garden in Oklahoma, in 2006, we planted it here.

It was interesting, after growing it in Oklahoma a year or two, I decided to look and find out where the Johnsons got their seed. They received their seed from Faxon Stinnet of Vian, Oklahoma! So the seed practically came full circle home! Faxon Stinnet had noted that he had been gardening for 75 years. I don't know when or where he got his seed from.

In 2006 I corresponded some with Farmer Dill. He is one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to knowing where varieties come from, etc. He's simply amazing. This is what he wrote at the time:

"I
think we were discussing the " Yardlong " bean. The old
seed companies simply listed it as "Yardlong" In Burpee's
1888 catalog they are listed as Yard Long or Cuban Asparagus bean
with this description: "This is quite a curiosity. It is a pole
bean with dark green foliage, and pods growing two feet and upward in length. The pods, of such extraordinary length, are produced so
abundantly as to almost conceal the foliage. Pkt 10 cts."
Shumway still vends red seeded cultivar as "Yardlong".
Today there are dozens of cultivars on the market. Apparently they are
Asian, particularly Chinese in origin. I suspect that the original
came with the Chinese laborers imported to build railroads and canals
in the middle to late 1800's."

Anyway, I will always grow it. An interesting aside: in 1996 our family passed through Salem, IL. Grandpa Swalley handed me a Metamucil bottle full of Georgia Long Seed. They had forgotten that I had first given them the seed. For about 8-9 years, that was the only bean they grew. He handed me the bottle and said, "Here George, take care of these for us. We won't be able to garden much longer." That may have been the last year they grew it.

I grew from that bottle a couple of times and then stashed it, in my seed cabinet, forgetting about it. In 2011, I tried a germination test and had over 30% germination! Cowpea seed has a LONG shelf life!

Amy, I believe that some aphids can overwinter in the soil and others can overwinter as eggs, but I'm not sure how many actually overwinter here. Since I almost never have aphids, I'm not that familiar with how they function. The only yellow aphids I've ever seen here were the oleander aphids that feed on milkweed plants. They are pretty common on milkweeds in some parts of OK, and it wouldn't surprise me if they decided to visit your vegetable garden. Most aphids are opportunists and will feed on many different plants, not just on the primary plants they're seen feeding on most often. Generally, aphids are pretty easy to hose off the plants with a sharp stream of water and often don't even try to return the plants they just were removed from. Some stubborn aphids may have to be washed off the plants for a few consecutive days before they get the message and go away.

George, Isn't is interesting how Georgia Long came almost full circle from Faxon Stinett to you? It is almost like you were meant to bring it back to Oklahoma again.

I love growing plants with a history like that.

Yardlongs grow like mad here, but I prefer the flavor of standard southern peas to them so almost never grow them. I grow too many peas as it is, and I wouldn't do that if I didn't love eating them so much. I have to be careful or I plant so many that I end up spending all of July and August shelling peas endlessly.

Dawn

I tucked some of the long bean seeds I have in a couple of spots on trellises. I'm going to have a maze of cattle panel arches soon. I love those things.

Sorry, it takes me so much time to respond to some things.

Zongozotla Pintitos is a landrace cowpea from the Sierra North of Puebla, in Mexico. Zongozotla is a town out in the hills, where I used to visit and teach. We have a good many friends there. It is a Totonac Indian village and in that particular location, they raise this cowpea out in the cornfields. It's mix of black and white seeded cowpeas. Every year, around June, they harvest the seed (I believe at shelly stage) and use it to make bean tamales. The black seed especially shows up in the tamale, which explains the name "Pintitos," which means spotted. Many times we were served these tamales. They were DELICIOUS!

At some point, one of our friends gave us some "Pintitos," probably expecting us to make tamales. Can't remember if we did or not. But I know I saved seed! We brought this seed back with us, when we returned to the USA, in 2001.

Zongozotla Pintitos grows well everywhere I've tried it (NJ and OK). Yet, for some reason, I have to concentrate on not losing the white seed. It seems that the black seed germinates better.

Here's a picture of Zongozotla. Brings back fond memories...

Interesting, George, do you have a recipe for the tamale? I'm picturing a kind of refried bean sort of filling? I assume it could be made with other types of cow peas.