Raised Bed Gardening

[bd354]

  I've gotten squash and cucumbers three times so far and one eggplant. Bell pepper once and banana pepper once. Tomatoes are gettin there. Okra are just beginning to bear.

[WH_Conley]

First planting of bush beans drowned out, just enough left for a mess or two, second and third planting looking good. Horticulture and pinto beans looking good. Will be making kraut in a few days. Don't know if the tops are any indicator or not, but the potatoes are waist high and loaded with bloom. Have some tomatoes just starting to bloom. Cuke seed was old and did know if it was any good, so we just sowed them, they were all good, just got done cutting down about four out of every five plants.

[limbrat]

I didnt get around to gardening this year , but i plan to experment with raised beds. I am having to build again and the new code wont allow me to use my old septic. I gotta use one of those that spray the gray water all over the yard through a sprinkler system. I aint crazy about that. I wont to see if i can pump it into above ground tanks and have it gravity feed into raised beds through soaker hoses.

[Dodgy Loner]

I've gotten two pickings off my green beans so far.  I have three 20' rows and got almost two grocery bags full 8)  Canned 6 quarts (about one grocery bag full).  Cooked a bunch for father's day and gave the rest away.  The radishes and broccoli are done.  Cucumbers and potatoes will be the next thing to come in digin1  I can't wait!

[WH_Conley]

Should have cole slaw and cukes by the end of the week. Will have to wait on the rest of it.

[WDH]

My garden is producing okra, cucumbers, green beans, green peppers, hot cayenne peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and yellow squash.  Expect for the tomatoes which are just starting to get ripe, everything else has hit its stride.

[Don K]

I got up at 5:30 this morning to pick what I thought would be a coupla buckets of my Pink Eye Peas. First picking ya know.  : Picked 7 buckets, 3.5 bushels.









Fortunately I borrowed Mom's pea sheller, I wish this thing would have been around when I was young. The peas were shelled in less than a hour.










Put 16 qts. of peas in the freezer. They will be good this winter.


Don

[Radar67]

That's a nice haul Don. I wish my tomatos would start doing something.  :(

[SwampDonkey]

Prune some leaves off Radar, that usually entices them to set fruit.

[zopi]

Here's a good forum for the tomatoheads in the group..all you ever wanted to know about tomatos..

www.tomatoville.com

[Norm]

Now that's the way to shell peas!

Mine bit the dust when our temps hit the 90's last week. They turn hard and bitter so into the compost pile they went.

I've never seen that variety before Don, how do they taste?

[Dodgy Loner]

I assume you're referring to English peas, Norm. Don's are pinkeye purplehulls are a variety of southern peas, and they taste a lot like black-eyed peas (which is another variety of southern peas).  I planted purplehull cowpeas and zipper peas, but pinkeye purplehulls are my favorite .  The local farm store just didn't have any.

[Norm]

I've never grown the southern variety of peas before and am curious about how they are processed and cooked. Also how long of a season are they?

[Don K]

Norm, they are a great pea and come in several varieties. These are called Top Pick and the peas develop more on the top of the plants for easier picking. This is my first year to grow this variety. They are a pinkish red hull. I usually grow the traditional purple hull or the improved variety. The hulls will get the color of a eggplant when mature. My daddy says during the lean years when he was a boy they would boil the hulls and add sugar to the juice and it was a substitute for grape jelly.

To process for the freezer I put my big pot on on my turkey fryer ( don't heat the house up ) and cover the peas with 2-3" water. Bring to a rolling boil and skim the foam that develops as that has all the little bits and pieces you don't want. ( My mom has always done that ) Boil for about 10 minutes to blanch then cool and put into whatever container you like with enough juice to cover for freezing.

Now as to the way to cook, that is preference. I like to put a few strips of bacon or hamhock in with them, any smoked meat is good. Cook slowly until tender and then hurt yourself by adding cornbread, with some fried okra on the side or some diced onion in them or whatever suits your fancy. If you aren't into seasoning meat a couple of chicken buillon cubes and a dash of oil make them light and tasty.

Down here you can make two crops a season. This batch should be finished this month and I will plow them in and replant a fall crop. They usually make between 60 and 90 days. You will usually get 3-4 good pickings on a 3-4 day skip for ripening. I think they would do well up there. If you would like to try some Norm, let me know next year and I will send you a few pounds to try. I will get some pics of the plants and post. They are a little weak due to the drought we are experiencing, but they do pretty good in our hot, dry weather.

Don   

[Dodgy Loner]

I agree with Don on all counts about how to cook them!  I always add bacon and diced onions and when there's cornbread to crumble into the peas there's nothing better.  They are a heat-loving crop, unlike English peas, and they don't germinate very well until the soil is warm.  I can't plant them in my area (southern Appalachians) until the first of May.  We used to plant them the first week of April when we lived near the coast in South Georgia.  As a rule of thumb, plant them the same time you would plant corn or okra.  The nice thing about southern peas is that they store so well frozen - no need to can them.  I process them the same way Don does.

[Norm]

Thanks guys, boy they sound like a good crop to grow.

I always have trouble with my pea crop. Seems about the time they start producing the heat sets in and they turn tough. I'm going to try a fall crop this year to see if they will do better.

Don thanks for the offer, if I can't find a source I may take you up on that.

[Don K]

Alright, pics for the ones not fortunate enough to have pinkeyes. Not the prettiest specimans, but they are producing heavily. That is the beauty of this species. They are like the special forces of the pea world. They will come through when the going gets tough.  :D





This shows the blooms.





You can see why they are called Top Pick. These are immature.






These are ready to pick.





Next day or so this pea will be too dry.





My rows are 212 ft long. Frazzling grass took them when it was to wet to plow and spray. You can see all the peas on the tops. They will be picked Fri. morning.

Don

[WDH]

Yummnm.  Now that is some good eating with the hamhocks and cornbread  8) 8) 8).

[beenthere]

They sure look like string beans to me. What makes 'em a pea?

Seems peas have a different (shorter, fatter) pod. But who'm I to say what goes on in the south.  ;D ;D

[Dan_Shade]

your weeden looks way better than my weeden

[SwampDonkey]

They sure look like string beans to me. What makes 'em a pea?

Seems peas have a different (shorter, fatter) pod. But who'm I to say what goes on in the south.  ;D ;D

I see I didn't have to speak my mind. ;D

[Jeff]

We'd call that a bean here too just going by the look of the leaves and the fruit, but I think they are all (beans and peas) legumes.

[Don K]

Our peas grow like our kudzu, so fast they don't have time to get fat. :D

Don

[DanG]

They sure look like string beans to me. What makes 'em a pea?

Seems peas have a different (shorter, fatter) pod. But who'm I to say what goes on in the south.  ;D ;D

What makes a string bean a bean?  Well, that's what they are called, so that's what they are.  These things we're talking about are called peas, so that's what they are.

The peas that are commonly grown in the North, what we call "English Peas, Garden Peas, or Green Peas, are actually the seeds of a plant named Pisum Sativum.  Next time you're in the grocery store, ask the stockboy where you might find Pisum Sativum seeds, and see if you get anything other than a blank look. ;D

While we're nitpicking the semantics of legumes, in what way is a green bean green?  Well, they are green as in not ripe, rather than green in color.  They are simply immature seed pods of a bean plant that would be inedible if left to mature.  The pods of southern peas can be eaten this way too, and frequently are, though not usually alone.  Any immature pods that find their way to the sheller's fingers are just broken into pieces and thrown into the pot with the rest.  We call them "snaps" and they are mighty tasty.

[Dodgy Loner]

There is no strict taxonomic difference between a bean and a pea.  They both refer to many different genera of the legume family.  However, the term "string bean" is an old term that refers to plants of the of the species Phaseolus vulgaris (common bean) with an edible pod that has a tough, fibrous "string" running along its length that must be removed before eating.  Well over 100 years ago, breeders developed improved varieties that did not have the fibrous string, and since practically all of our modern varieties no longer contain the string, what was once referred to as the string bean is now more often called a green bean or a snap bean (or a pole bean, if it happens to be a climbing variety rather than a bushy variety). 

In general, the garden plants that are called "beans" in the U.S. are members of the genus Phaseolus.  Green beans as well as all of your common dry beans (kidney, black, pinto, navy, etc.) are Phaseolus vulgaris.  Butterbeans (Lima beans to you Yanks) are members of the species Phaseolus lunatus.  As DanG already mentioned, English peas (AKA garden peas or green peas) are members of Pisum sativum.  Our southern pea (Vigna unguiculata) occupies another genus completely.  To confuse matters, however, there is a relatively common variety of Phaseolus lunatus known as a "butterpea" due to the round shape of the seed, and there is a variety of Vigna unguiculata known as a "yard-long bean" because the entire pod is eaten like a green bean, rather than shelled like a pea.

Now I'm certain you fellas have heard of black-eyed peas at some point in your life, but for some reason I've never heard an objection to the term until now.  I think it's because the average person's perception of what constitutes a bean is based on the shape of the seed more so than the length of the pod (peas are more spherical, beans are longer or flatter), because quite frankly, the average person is a lot more familiar with the 14.5 oz can that they come in rather than the pod that they grow in.