Please read text!
Black Seeded Cow Pea Vigna Unguiculata Seeds
Packet of 10+ home grown seeds!
These guys are a bit of a staple for us.
They produce huge crops and you can eat them at all stages of development.
Small thin tender and green they are great in salads.
As they get up to around 20-30cm they are nice chopped up in stirfries, stews, curries, pasta sauces, and soups.
Once they lose the green and become cream coloured its best to wait for them to fully harden up and use the seed itself as a pulse.
Just treat them like kidney beans except unlike kidney beans they cook much faster.
Bright glossy black, they really add some colour contrast and they make a great match to pretty much everything.
The guinea pigs and chooks love nibbling the leaves and they are good in a stirfy too!
During the life of the crop and especially at the end when you dig it in they are adding huge amounts of nitrogen and humus to the soil, actively improving it for the next crop you plant there.
As a vine you can grow them on balconies and in small rental properties and a medium sized pot of good soil will repay you handsomely over several months.
Any excess can be chopped up and frozen and we use heaps like that.
Super handy to look in the fridge and just see a sad looking carrot or whatever but to also know you have a handful of greens ready to rock.
You can also eat the leaves and they are as good as any other leafy green imo, but just be aware removing them will stunt the growth of your plants a bit so only start harvesting them after flowers have dropped and the season is finishing up.
Originally from Africa they are much more tolerant to heat, drought and humidity than more common beans and their huge versatility and equally huge yield has spread them pretty much anywhere warm.
Super popular in Asia, and grown as a nitrogen fixing crop on a massive scale in the USA.
Apparently 3,000,000 tonnes are consumed by 200,000,000 people all around the world on a daily basis!
Considered one of the oldest domesticated crops, cowpeas from rock shelters in Central Ghana have been dated to the second millennium BCE!
After that they went through Asia and even the ancient Greeks and Romans put them to good use.
They are commonly know by a heap of names all around the world including adua, akedi, akoti, alev, arebe, asparagus bean, ayi, azzo, black-eyed pea, black-eyed pea, catjang, catjang, catjang cowpea, Chinese long-bean, Chinese long bean, clay pea, costeno, cow-pea, cowpea, cowpea beans, cowpeas, cowpea seeds, cream pea, crowder pea, dau dai, dau dai trang ron nau, dijok, Dolichos biflorus, Dolichos catjang, Dolichos hastifolius, Dolichos lubia, Dolichos melanophtalmus, Dolichos melanophthalamus, Dolichos monachalis, Dolichos obliquifolius, Dolichos sinensis, Dolichos tranquebaricus, Dolichos unguiculatus, dolique asperge, dolique mongette, ewa, ezo, feijao-espargo, feijao-fradinho, frijol de costa, haricot asperge, haricot indigene, imbumba, indumba, isanje, isihlumaya, judía catjang, judía esparrago, kacang bengkok, kacang bol, kacang merah, kacang toonggak, kadje, kedesche, kunde, Liebrechtsia scabra, long bean, lubia, mongo, ngalo, niebe, nyebbe, pea bean, Phaseolus sphaerospermus, Phaseolus unguiculatus, pois a vaches, purple-hull pea, rabiza, saau, sona, southern pea, sow pea, tipielega, tombing, too, tuya, Vigna brachycalyx, Vigna catjang, Vigna catjiang, Vigna scabra, Vigna scabrida, Vigna sinensis, Vigna sinensis subsp. Sinensis, Vigna sinensis var. spontanea, Vigna unguiculata, Vigna unguiculata subsp. dekindtiana sensu, wake, yard-long bean, yardlong bean, and yard long bean.
It’s a great bean to have, the yields are massive, and best of all they are delicious too.
Well worth having in the collection!
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems, no nasties, no problems!!!
