Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Hi all, Likewise here in SEQ I planted straight into ground and got good germination. 3 blocks of between 20-50 seeds each, about 25-30cm apart. They are 2m+ tall, and look after themselves. I cut the tops for mulch. Haven't used the seeds to eat yet. If I'm lucky, the King Parrots come in for them. Hamish
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas you aren't wrong!! king parrots LOVE them! we see them all the time visiting and we don't mind sharing.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Well, I just planted 32 of them. Do you think that's enough? I popped them in a site I've marked for future orchard. I kinda feel like planting some more though... I guess I'd better think about what the other ingredients I will need for Dahl, I sure hope the kids are gonna like Dahl :wink:
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Cajanas cajan is a wonderful plant. It is great for pioneering into damaged areas. A short lived semiperrennial (2-3 years), it creates food, breaks up soil, shades out grasses, and leaves fuel wood when done. We use a lot of it here in new areas. Parrots love them! So do I.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Hi Grahame I'm not sure how they will cope with frosts etc, but let us know! They certainly like the conditions here in South East Queensland.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Jayjay Here is an old thread on pigeon peas. As an update to mine - none germinated. I don't now if the seeds were thieved, rotted, transported into another dimension, or if it was just too cold, but I had no luck at all. I'm in 'The Northern Country'. Yesterday, I planted some new seeds out in old tree stock tubes to see how they go. It would be nice to get them to grow, but if I don;t have any luck this time I'll probably move on to something else. Cheers Grahame
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I recently hoed a dry area up along my fence line (about 50m length) and planted about 3 cups worth of seed. With the rain and warm weather they have all come up.. about 3 weeks after planting they are between 30 and 60mm high. I'm yet to have too much pigeon pea!
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas Must the peas be shelled for chooks, or will they take care of that themselves? Still no comments on if they can tolerate frost or not? Sue
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas I planted a few seeds recently in old farm tree tubes, and I reckon 80% germinated. I haven't planted them all out yet, but will do so as soon as I can. The ones I have transplanted have obviously taken off compared to the ones still in tubes. I'm looking forward to my first crop. I guess I'll have togrow them as annuals too?
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas The ones that I planted out in May are just starting to flower now. Very pretty actually. I think the lorikeets have discovered them - and the sunflowers in the same bed. If a lorikeet can get to the seed, I'd reckon a chook would if you chop and drop.
Re: growing and eating pigeon peas a few of the queries.. re frost.. I don't know.. we don't really get frosts where I am re is 35 enough (graeme?) NO! I've never had enough.. I hope to remedy that.. re can the chooks eat them as is? They don't seem very good at getting them out of the shells.. my harvests have been too small in the past to share much with the chooks.. we've kept them for seed and ourselves! but for the shelled ones.. I even managed to teach my chooks to JUMP to grab them from between my fingers! (they love them!) Next season, I am going to try cutting all the pea-bearing branches off, and running them through my mulcher. The plan then is to give the resulting mulchings a shake in a big bag, collect any intact peas (probably a small portion of the total peas) for my own consumption and storage.. and give the remaining split peas, and mulched pods + peas + leaves + branches to the chooks for them the scratch through and eat tips + seeds and all of the goodness..
