How to Pressure Can Crowder and Blackeyed Peas

A crowder pea is any variety of cowpea bearing pods with closely spaced (crowded) seed (peas). Last year, we grew Top-Pick Crowder Peas and saved some seeds and planted them this year.

Purple Top Pick Crowder Peas
Purple Top Pick Crowder Peas

We love crowder peas. They are our favorite, but we also planted blackeyed peas as well. Both are in the cowpea family. This method below will work for any variety of crowder pea, blackeyed pea, purple hull peas, etc.

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Garden Harvest Showcase

There really hasn’t been much time to do blogging lately. It seems our “real” jobs, family, church, and our garden has been keeping us busy. It is all a good busy….well except for maybe the “real” jobs. Actually, that is a good busy too. We are both fortunate to have good jobs so I really should not complain. Although, in some ways the unusual weather this year has caused us a few issues, we believe overall this year’s garden is a vast improvement from our first garden last year. Our sweet peppers are a nice size now. The crowder peas are turning purple and popping up all over the place! I love crowder peas. Our corn has several nice ears filling out. They are looking more promising than last year’s corn crop. We’ve also harvested all of the yellow onions and winter onions and they are curing.
 
Our First Peach Harvest
Our First Peach Harvest
Purple Top Pick Crowder Peas
Purple Top Pick Crowder Peas
Our First Corn Harvest
Corn Harvest
Yellow Onion and Winter Onion Harvest
Yellow Onion and Winter Onion Harvest

Peak at Our Garden Progress

It seems the weather in April in May has just been a bit bi-polar and our garden is not as far along as we had hoped. But we are finally having some consistent warm days and our garden is starting to improve. Here is a little bit of what’s going on in our garden.

Contender Green Beans, Carrots, Tomato Blooms, Top-Pick Crowder Peas, Leaf Lettuce, Potatoes Plant, and Oregano

Beans!

This year we planted dragon tongue beans, pinto beans, and top-pick crowder peas. The seed packet for the dragon tongue beans said they could be picked early (green) and the shells are similar to a green bean or left to dry and pick after the bean is fully mature similar to the pinto bean. We opted to let them mature and dry and pick them like pintos.

This is what we got. It is just about enough for one good mess of beans. I am grateful as we did not even know if we would get any harvest.  The shells have purplish striping. Some shells are darker than others. We were curious to see how they taste.

Dragon Tongue Beans
Dragon Tongue Beans

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What To Plant?

So, now we’ve just tilled up the yard…..so what to plant?!? We were already starting pretty late on this whole garden thing so we needed to get on the ball and buy some seeds and get planting.  We bought various seeds from Tractor Supply, Walmart, Lowes, and Dollar General.

We were out in town and thought we’d run by Lowes and Walmart and pick up some seeds.  These were not our usual store locations, but we were already there and they were more convenient at the time. Let me tell you don’t even bother going to a Lowes or Walmart in a city.  Their selection is pitiful!  We had much better luck going to our usual rural Lowes and Walmart.

Man, everywhere had tons of different types of green beans.  We thought we wouldn’t do green beans because both of our Mama’s always keep us generously supplied with canned green beans.  So, we were thinking maybe some other kinds of beans.  I thought maybe we should try some October beans.  I knew from growing up they are about the same thing as pintos, but is what most people around here always had.  At least that’s how I recalled it…lol.  Well, we couldn’t find October beans or pinto beans anywhere.  We found some dragon tongue beans that look similar to a pinto but with some purplish stripes.  We were curious so bought them.
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