Rachelzedd

Cowpeas!

We’ve now had three small harvests of young cowpeas so far! We’re growing two varieties: California Black Eyed Peas and Haricot Rouge Du Burkina Faso Cowpea.

The black eyed peas grew more like a bush bean variety, bloomed and started producing early. They produce white blooms that are yellow when closed. It’s very obvious when the peas are ready, they bulge in the pod, and the pod turns darker and begins to visibly dry. 

The red cowpeas grew more like a pole bean. The plants grew very tall vines on our bean teepees, and produced much later. The flowers are beautiful purple, and pods turn dark purple/red when full developed. They were much harder to tell when to ready pick, the peas don’t bulge in the pod like the other variety, they stay hard and smooth.

we’ve had three mini harvests of the fresh peas, but I think I’m going to let the rest dry out on the plants. That is, if this awful el nino weather gives them a few days respite from rain.

That’s so nice to hear! :)

Garden Update: Jan 7th

The cowpeas have climbed the poles (one kind much more fully than the other, maybe the closer one is a bush variety of cowpeas?) and I love the flowers. We’re having a cold snap here and the cowpeas have developed mildew that you can see, but we’ve sprayed them with copper and are hoping the normal dry and warm florida weather will be back soon. The cold has been really great for everything else!

The tomatoes have come back to life and are fruiting, the coconut palm seedling is doing well, and we have some oranges ripening! 

We also have one bokchoy plant that self-seeded for the 3rd time (and came out the best of any we tried to plant earlier). A sweet potato vine also came back to life, and for the 6th time. The 6th time is clearly the charm because it is full of beautiful purple flowers (4th picture form the top)!

I’ve found and collected a lot of materials over the past few years. It’s raining out today so why not take them all out and arrange them?

I made a zine on the basics of starting your own edible garden! 

It can be intimidating to start growing edible plants, so I’ve compiled and explained the basics to help you out! Included are sections on soil types, different edible plants and what to choose, hardiness zones, starting seeds indoors, planting outdoors, pests, fertilizer, and more!

I’m selling digital and paper versions on my etsy for only about a dollar or so!

check it out: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RachelZedd