Beans & peas
Cowpeas (southern peas)
The summer legume; sow after the soil warms.
- Outside
- Direct mid Apr to mid May, again late Aug
- Where
- In ground or raised bed
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Deep weekly soak once established; drought patient
- Harvest
- Jun to Jul, then Oct to Nov
Care
- Water
- Deeply and about weekly once established, wetting the soil several inches down; cowpeas shrug off the dry stretches that end a snap bean, which is what puts them on the summer bench here. Water the soil, not the leaves.
- Sow
- Direct sow mid-April to mid-May, once the soil is well warmed, an inch deep and a few inches apart in a wide block. An optional fall round goes in late August to early September and needs a fast variety to beat the November frost.
- Feed
- Like every pea and bean they fix their own nitrogen; a shovel of compost at planting is the whole program. Skip extra feed, since rich nitrogen buys vines at the expense of pods.
- Ready
- First pick 55 to 80 days out depending on variety: harvest green-shell once the pods fill and the seed shows shape, or let them dry on the plant for the jar. Keep picking; the plants hold production straight through the heat.
- Trouble
- The point of the crop is how little goes wrong: it holds flowers and sets pods through the mid-June to early September gap that stalls snap beans. The honest failure is the fall round racing the mid-November frost after a late sowing.
In a bag?
- No
- A bed crop by sheer root depth and block needs; a 15 gallon bag holds a corner of a block instead of a stand, and a summer stand would cook in a patio bag in this heat besides.
Cowpeas are the reliable legume here: they take the summer heat that ends every other bean and still fill pods for black-eyed peas.
Growing
The Texas southern pea sheet plants them after the soil warms: March in the southern half of Texas, April or later in the northern half, as late as July in the Panhandle. Killeen sits between those anchors, which lands here at mid-April to mid-May. Sow in a wide block, an inch deep, and mulch; the vines carry the mid-June to early September gap instead of fighting it, holding flowers and setting pods through weather that ends snap beans. A fall round can go in 10 to 12 weeks before the November 15 frost, but only a fast variety makes dry pods ahead of it. This is the summer bench: while the rest of the bed sulks, cowpeas hold the legume slot.
Varieties
The state sheet's variety list runs long, and the garden standards are on it: Pinkeye Purple Hull, Blackeye No. 5, Texas Cream 40 and Mississippi Silver among them, at 55 to 75 days on the sheet and up to 80 on the Lubbock guide. Blackeye No. 5 answers for the black-eyed peas.
In the kitchen
Cowpea guisados all summer and a pot of black-eyed peas off the fall round: simmered low with onion, garlic and a chile from the salsa bed until the pot turns brothy. The dried crop jars up for the winter like the pintos do.