I thought I would throw in a few photo's and observations made after growing some pigeon pea, since there seemed to be a lack of these before I decided to grow some. Firstly, I had read, before growing pigeon pea that you could eat both the peas and the pods when they are young. I tried eating pods today, when they were around 40mm long. I have put a few photo's at : https://www.pisspoorperformer.blogspot.com/ I picked them when when they were 40 to 50mm long. The peas are only partially formed at around 2-3mm in size. I steamed them, and they were stringy to the point of being inedible. So, I am guessing the only way you can eat them in the pods is if they are REALLY young (say smaller than 20mm), which I think is probably impractical. I will post again when they are more mature, and have tried the mature peas. Lastly I have put a photo of the full plant, and the pods on the plant. They were planted about 4-5 months ago and are around 2 metres high.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas The mature dried peas are used to make dahl. I've made it at a permacooking course here on the Sunshine coast. Cheers, Sonya
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas on re-reading my post, I realised it may have come across overly negative. I mainly planted the pigeon pea to fill some spare space and prepare some ground where we plan to grow a couple of fruit trees (nitrogen plus break up the soil). They have been great, grown fast, heaps of lovely biomass production and then flowers and now heaps of peas. I do indeed plan to make dahl when all of the pods get mature, there looks like there should be plenty of dahl to go around. My soon to be chooks will surely enjoy all of the leftover.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas pigeon peas in spanish are called gandules (carribean) or chicharilla (amazon). They are very popular in latin america, you could find more recipes like Arroz con gandules (rice and pigen peas).
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Here in Trinidad something very weird is happening to pigeon peas. They are still blooming. Pigeon peas are supposed to fruit in December. Mind you it is raining as though it was December. Mostly we just stew pigeon peas, not necessarily with rice.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I assume you wait till the pods go brown then collect and eat the actual peas? I don't have a huge crop, but am accumulating enough of the dry peas to give them a go.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas The papayas in your blog site, are they solo ? is pigeon pea the best solution that you found to improve your soil quality and getting something edible from it ? Cheers, Parata.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Parata I'm not sure what you mean by "solo". The papaya shown is just a single plant that I bought and planted around 9 months ago. It was sold as being self-polinating, and appears to do this quite well. At last count there was 27 fruit on the plant (after I made green papaya and chicken salad with one). I would say that pigeon pea might be a bit big for some people to use in the backyard, but I think it's great to just put in areas that you're not planning to do much with for a while. I love my thick area of pigeon pea in the backyard, and I'm sure the chooks will love it soon as well. I would say it is good in areas where you plan to plant trees, but not as good for preparing garden beds, since the plant material produced is fairly woody. Perhaps lucern would be better, but variety is always good. For people with more space than a small suburban block, I would say that pigeon pea would be AWESOME, it seems to be really hardy.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas PPP, I meant solo as papaya variety with red flesh. Not sure if solo is suitable for salad. Any way 27 fruits beared means that you have good soil there. In my suburban block, I have a unknown variety, the fruits are large because I pruned off the ones with growth defect. However they don't taste very sweet, not sure if this is due to the heavily clayed soil. Cheers, Thierry.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas It's also known as Toor Dahl. I am looking forward to my very first homegrown toor dahl this year.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Parata Actually, our soil here is not great. It is a gravelly clay. I did, however, dig in plenty of compost and manure, and put a good thick layer of mulch on top. Cosmic From a small area ~2m x 3m I have so far only got 1cm depth of seeds in the bottom of a jar. I hope you've planted more if you want to make a decent quantity of dahl...
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I'm happy to report that from my latest crop of pigeon pea I have harvested about 3 kg! They seem to require little water, and picking them is really easy, just walk around, and pull off all of the pods and shove them in a bucket. I tried them in the sun for a couple of days and have been busy seperating them by 1) bashing the feed bags I have them in on the ground to seperate the seeds from the pods 2) hand removal of the pods from the seeds ; and 3) separating the lighter materials by swirling them around in a bowl (similar to "panning for gold") and blowing to get rid of the waste. We have made a series of curries with them, and my wife is really liking them, she was a bit dubious about the plant at first, but now we are looking for more places to put in pigeon pea. I don't think any SE QLD permaculture garden is complete without some pigeon pea! I'm not in this category, but if one was wanting to try to be self sufficient, I think that a large pigeon pea crop is a must, it needs little more water than rain, crops well, is fairly easy to harvest (perhaps a little laboursome to seperate into only seed), but most importantly of all, is storable, probably for more than a year or two. The chooks absolutely fall over themselves for pigeon pea as well.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas mbaazi wa nazi is the best way to eat them (I reckon) https://www.congocookbook.com/vegetable_ ... _nazi.html I found that they can be dangerous when you hand shuck the peas - there's a very sharp and very hard spike on the pod that invariabley ends up under your finger nails. Eating the small pods is not a good experience - - even after a lot of cooking they still had a lot of (tanin or oxalic acid) in them I like the congo recipe above - very tasty and keeps a couple of days in the fridge
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I used my drill with paint stiring attachment to assist in removing shells. Place pods in bucket - inset drill and go for it. Then put the whole lot through a sieve to collect the peas. I collected a couple of kilos this way - without too much effort, but then got sick of it so stopped :lol:. The main purpose of collection this time around was to plant out an unused area of our place that is very weedy (too shaded to really do much with and on a big slope - but PP should grow there okay). When I harvest next time - I'll refine the pod removal method, making a purpose built attachment for the drill and also using a couple of different sieves to recover the peas and then remove all the small crap from them.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I've never heard of eating the pods. They are quite tough, but I suppose it is possible with good cooking. Here in the Philippines we call it kadyos (https://gardencore.blogspot.com/2007/03/kadyos-cajanus-cajan_19.html) and we eat it like this https://gardencore.blogspot.com/2007/03/kadyos-for-dinner.html and various other ways. I don't think I've ever heard of a local dish that eats the stuff dried, we always use it fresh, sometimes still green. I love to get a whole bag at the market where the roots are starting to poke out..
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Sorry about your pigeon pea mishap. They get a really bad rap. I have heard it called cattle feed but I grew up eating gandules (as they are called in Puerto Rico) and it really hits the spot. I absolutely love it and I can eat a lot of rice and gandules. Here's a recipe you might enjoy. And if you're vegetarian you can leave out the pork its still good. https://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1718,12 ... 97,00.html I gotta try growing them now!
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I'm saving my existing ~1-2 kg for planting on our new bigger place.. I'll be on the search for recipes in six - 12 months when I hope to have an embarassing amount of them!
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I have some pigeon pea seeds that I am planning to grow here in Northern Victoria. Do they grow here (i.e. any frost sensitivity or anything to think about?). When is the best time to plant them? And do you plant them direct or grow them on in pots for best results?
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I've just planted some in SEQ. They are only 15 cm high as yet - so watch this space! The seeds are large enough to plant direct into the garden. I choose to grow them in small posts in seed raising mix until they got their first true leaves before transplanting. So far I have had 9 out of 9 seeds germinate. Mine came from Eden Seeds. The information I've seen says to plant in autumn.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Eco, you should have no worries at all.. I just planted mine by sticking them straight in the ground.. I think this is a great plant for this area, and I plan to grow at least a one hundred metre long row near the road when I move into my new place, it's fast growing, a good screen, great mulch (I have a mulcher to really chop them up), produce the peas, and fixes nitrogen. Based on my experience in my current little back yard, I'll just use a shovel to dig a little row and poke them into the soil at ~300mm spacing. I won't worry about watering them, I'll just wait for the first rain..
