You can harvest the pods when very small and eat like green beans. When the peas swell inside the pod you shell them and make "shellies". These are the fresh peas. Some people mix the little green bean like pods with the shellies. I try to harvest them before they get dried out early in the season assuming that will keep them producing longer. Then, later you can let them dry on the vine and bring them in for dried peas. (They will need more drying). Cowpeas confuse me, too, because I was raised by northerners. I don't have much experience with them. Recipes and cooking instructions should come from one of the southerners here.

I wait till the entire pod is purple or mostly purple. We call it shelling peas when you remove the outer hull and you are left with the pea. We boil the peas in water till they are cooked through and tender. You can add some salt to taste.

I'm like everyone else here; I like the shelled peas best (on the young side, just as the pods fill out nicely). Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I think what we pick fresh tastes wonderful without all the added bacon grease that my mom always cooked things in. I just simmer them in water, and add some butter and salt and pepper. It doesn't take them long to cook.

Thanks, everyone. They seem skinny and a little hard. Maybe they're just not ready to pick. It's nice to see something healthy and growing well in my garden right now. These and the crane melons.

I've grown other varieties of cow peas, but these seem different.

They are different. They are better than the rest. Most years I grow 4 to 6 different varieties of Pink Eye Purple Hulls.....just because I can. With them, I really don't need any other cowpeas, but I do grow other ones for variety. About the only cowpeas I won't grow are any that have the name blackeye or blackeyed.....not worth growing or eating when there's some many other better ones.

How do your purple peas look now? You should have plenty now to tell when to pick them.

authereray, they are great! In fact, I had them from dinner tonight. Once, they are "dried" a bit, I have to cook them longer, but either way, they are my new favorite southern pea.

What are y'all trying to do to me, talking about things I'll need more trellises for?

I made purple hull jelly for market. It is a very pretty jelly kind of grapish. I sold 3 jars

hazelinok,

I'm glad to hear you figured it out. Some people only want what they call green shell peas but I like them either way. Sometimes I don't get around to pick them in time so I let them dry. With a slice of beacon and a wedge of onion they taste good either way you cook them. I save the dry ones in a freezer bag and keep them in the freezer and they last for ever.

luvincannin, I've never tried purple hull jelly but I'll bet it's good.

My poor old Grandma always planted a patch of Purple Hull Peas, she called them "Blue Hull Peas", and thought that they were the salvation of the world. If you had a patch of peas every thing would be all right no matter what happened.

Kim, Cool! You know, if you make jelly from the hulls of other kinds of southern peas, like zipper, lady or cream peas, your jelly will have a slightly different color and flavor. It is uncanny.

authereray, I like them green or dried too, and love that they are so versatile.

You know, for a lot of old-time gardeners, southern peas were the salvation of the world in a bad year because they produced even in horrible heat that shut down everything else. My dad's family had to rely only on whatever they could grow for themselves in the 1920s and 1930s and there's years that peas, pinto beans and corn were about all they had. My aunts learned to pickle all kinds of things---even things most of us never would think to pickle---because having those pickled foods in the root cellar often meant the difference between a good enough winter or a starving winter, though often they almost starved in winter anyway, especially in the Dust Bowl years. I never understand why my dad and his brothers and sisters ate everything pickled under the sun when I was a kid. I finally understood after I became an adult and truly came to understand that they never had any money, so if they didn't grow it and preserve it themselves, then they had to food. I grow and preserve a lot of food myself, but my family likely would starve to death if all we had to eat was just the stuff that I grow.

Dawn

Young people today only know how to live out of the grocery store. Most will not even eat peas when offered and hardly any will eat cornbread.

I hate blackeyed peas because they taste like dirt, but if y'all swear the PEPH peas taste better than that, I'll build another freaking trellis and try them next summer.

Yes, try them, Rebecca. See if you like them. I love blackeyed peas too, but they do have a slight dirt taste, I agree. PEPH taste similar, but lack the dirt taste. They are just better. I'm growing a lot next year. I want to be able to eat them at least once a week throughout the year.

It seems like everyone's grandma or great grandma said the same type of thing about southern peas--my Great Grandma Stella did!

From pictures, my maternal grandma's family didn't look underfed in the 30's. My Mom said that her Mom and Grandma said they didn't have any money, but they grew a lot of their own food including meat animals. They were lucky, I guess, as the dust bowl didn't ruin their farm. The farm is in Gotebo. I can't remember from The Worst Hard Time, what areas were hit the hardest. The panhandle for one. I do remember that. It seems like Gotebo would have been affected...in SW Oklahoma? I don't know...

In reasonable growing conditions southern peas can yield as many pounds of food per foot of row as snap beans and significantly more than limas and garden (English) peas. I don't know why more people don't grow peas. Some people say they have limited space but you can plant peas as a green mulch between other vegetables and they will not bother anything but are good for the soil and fix nitrogen in the soil.

I harvested 4 different kinds yesterday. I have a 5th variety growing, but I want seeds from it, and it hasn't gotten big enough yet. I regret not planting PEPH this year, but I guess this is the year of the southern pea trials.

The zippers make the biggest peas and have long pods, but the family didn't care for the taste. I have not cooked the others. Whippoorwill has small seeds. It got aphids. Pennyrile I've grown before, we like them. They make good sized seeds and long pods. Red ripper is new to me, slower to start flowering than the others. Then I have some yard long beans which can be eaten like snap beans. (All can be eaten that way if you get the pods small enough. But the long beans can be eaten to a larger size.) Long beans can be allowed to make peas and eaten that way, too. Haricots Rouge Burkina du Faso is the one I want seeds from. It didn't germinate well, so I don't have many plants. Pods are red, turning purple, which is kind of cool. Not very long.

What many people don't realize about Southern peas is that you can eat the leaves boiled like greens, you can eat the young snaps like green beans, you can eat the shelled green peas and you can cook the dry peas. There are so many different ways peas can be used as food.

Agreed. They are incredibly versatile, which is one reason they've always been so important to families who grow their own food. Now I am hungry for some and may need to go pick some and cook them.

The article I read, which I can't find, said the leaves have more protein than the seeds. This article says "According to James Duke in his Handbook of Legumes of World Economic Importance cowpea leaves can produce 9 times the calories, 15 times the protein, 90 times the calcium, and thousands of times more vitamin C and beta-carotene of cowpea seed." The traditional African way to use them is to boil them, to soften, then dry in the sun for later use in soups, etc. I think I will dry some to make "green powder" from. Another article said they were eating the thinings from broadcast seeded plants, sauted like spinach. Unlike spinach, there is no oxalic acid in them . My original searches turned up Indian recipes that used cowpea leaves, too. But, like Dawn says, just be cause something is edible doesn't mean you would enjoy eating it. Never the less, if the zombie apocalypse comes, nice to know what you can eat.

I grew up eating crowder peas. My father absolutely loved them. He liked them so much that one summer after cutting the wheat, he planted a small field - probably 10-15 acres to crowder peas. Somehow he rigged the combine to harvest the dried pods . Thank God we didn't have to harvest by hand!! That winter, now remember this was in the 60's - only three channels of TV - we had a big dryer box in the corner of the living room full of crowder peas. Every evening I had a cakepan to shell before I could work on homework. Mom and Dad shelled all evening. After the crowder peas were shelled, the box was full of pecans to shell. The didn't believe in idle hands. Now I grow crowder peas (and pecan trees he grafted) in my garden. Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to find the seed. Thank God for the internet!! But after reading about these Pinkeye Purple Hull Peas, I think I'll plant a few next year in my garden as well.

Patti

Patti, there is a wide variety of cowpeas. Check out Southern Exposure Seed Exchange or Sand Hill Preservation Center for some variety. I notice SHP has several kinds of crowder peas.

Amy, I need to find a way to enjoy the leaves then! Lots of calcium and protein! Good to know.

No they are ready when they are purple & filled out good. Then you shell & cook.

Great thread here Jennifer