Greetings growers! Here is a space to share your planting of GTS cowpeas with photographs and all of your observations during your growing season. When are you planting? Whats the weather like? Whats your garden look like? You may share all of your garden and beyond seed saving.
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Here is my little patch of cowpeas that are actually together. There is the GTS mix, “Not Just Cowpeas” and more from my seed stash of mixed heirlooms. I planted in March 2025 and will plant again this fall during monsoon season. Yes, two seasons to plant legumes in Arizona. My two garden spaces are small, one is a greenhouse 20x40 feet and the other is my backyard 40x100 and I cram in as much diversity as possible each growing season.
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Can cowpeas be planted in an area that has been mulched, but where the soil has not been disturbed? Does the soil really need to be 20°C before I sow the seeds? I have 2 kilos of cowpeas that I would like to try in a supposedly fertile area.
Thanks for the help!
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Yes, cowpeas prefer warm soil, and full sun. They tend to be heat tolerant and drought tolerant as well. Where did your original seed come from? When I have seed im not sure of, plant in succession plots, or plant 20 seeds and observe fir sprout emerging…how many days before they come up. Can you post a photograph of the soil? Will you plant any other seed with the cowpeas?
Divide your area into fourths or thirds, plant only a portion of the area, wait two weeks and plant another. Observe how the seed germinates. Or you could utilize plug trays or soil blocks and transplant the seedlings…I prefer to direct seed into the ground. What is the dimensions of your garden area? What latitude are you at in Portugal? And do you dry farm or are you on irrigation for water? Im in Arizona, all the way south next to the California border and Mexico. Very dry, with irrigation and loads of sand. I started with adding composted wood chips and horse manure. But as Im learning adaptation gardening, Im not adding anything anymore except water. Lots of seeds will fail, but some will live. Just keep planting and saving seed. Start with where you are comfortable.
Hi Kim,
thanks so much for your very kind reply.
We are at about 38° latitude. Where I want to try the cowpeas is only 500 meters from the ocean, but there are dunes in between.
Normally it doesn’t rain here in the summer, this year we had enormous quantities of rain in the winter, and the end is not yet in sight.
I simply have grocery store cowpeas, and got about 10% germination on wet paper towels in the winter. The area I plan on planting is at the lower end of a natural water line, so it should stay moist enough without irrigation. We have plenty of land, I think I should sow the seeds densely, considering the poor germination rate. Planting every two weeks is brilliant.
I think I read that cowpeas like slightly acidic soil and are drought tolerant. But I might be wrong. I want to try a number of different cover crops to see what works best.
Pictures tomorrow!
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Im glad your spending efforts planting in sand, there’s alot if it and it will produce foods. Im at about 33° latitude and have alkaline sand. I have no good water horizon in the soil, irrigation is required. Sowing heavy with low germination seed is a good practice to get some plants growing. Im glad your planting seed directly into the soil.
My cowpeas are germinating now!
I put together my own diverse mix, plus seed from last year’s GTS offering that didn’t get planted. They’re looking good so far!
The mix planted:
One of the beds so far:
I’ve mostly grown pinkeye purple hull and Holstein cowpeas in the past, so having so much diversity of color is fun. I guess we’ll see which ones survive my neglect and abuse as well as the ones I’ve grown in the past!
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Its a great patch of diversity, and lovely colors of seed. Seedlings look strong and the soil looks like it will support them. Thanks for the photos it really helps to understand how the seed and growing will move through the season. Im glad to see direct sowing intobthe soil. Im thinking the seed relationship to the growing area is strongest when allowed too germinate directly where the plant will grow. Hoping the endophyte relationship between the seed and soil gets stronger.
Hi Kim,
I had wanted to send pictures after mulching, but that still hasn’t happened. I will need to use my scythe instead.
The photos show a bit of soil, and what the area looks like at the moment.
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Looks like good soil, the grasses around look healthy. The cowpeas could grow comfortably by the grasses. Have any seeds sprouted?
I did not get the true GTS cowpeas mix but a mix from the european serendipity seed train that came in just perfect because I had only one grocery store variety.
Last year I planted something like 15 square meters of cowpeas and they grew very dense and seemed to develop pretty well but only two plants were able to form a pod and none produced mature seeds. Maybe my grocery store variety came direct from Africa and was unable to cope with the mild weather we have had last summer in french brittany.
This year, with this mix that already has a cycle complete in France (a bit south from here) I have better hopes.
I planted them (this morning! ) alternatively with rows of sweet corn since I like to associate cereals and legumes and they are a good cover crop even if they don’t produce seeds. But my corn rows are oriented north-south to allow full sun to access the cowpeas.
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I put about half of mine in the ground today (the rest are waiting for the peas to finish). Climbing types on the left, bush types on the right. Bush types are planted in front of trellised melons and cucumbers.
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Good plan, what color of seed did you start with?
Interesting, i wonder if the color does help determine vine or bush habit. Bright reds and oranges fir vines, clay and blanched color fir bush type habit?
Interesting, I did not even know they existed in climbing habits … well I sowed them at the foot of corn, so the climbing ones may find their way up…
I started with a mix of 6 open pollinated varieties (some of which were probably landraces themselves, others not). One never did much and is no longer in the mix. One (the black and white) was advertised as a bush-type landrace but had a substantial number of climbing off-types that I saved into the “climbing” jar; three years later, I can comfortably say that the two habits are stable once sorted the first time.
I plant them mixed up as “climbing” and “bushy”, and save seeds into the respective jars, but I haven’t seen any evidence of actual crosses.
I can’t say that it’s impossible that there’s a relationship between color/pattern and growing habit, but I suspect that’s just an artifact of my small number of selections.
My experience suggests that climbing types are more common on the Asian “yardlong bean” varieties. I personally prefer the flavor of either gulf coast or desert southwest/Mexican selections, so that’s what I grow. The blue ones are/started out as Blue Goose field peas (saved from a pound I bought to eat), which have a unique flavor and particularly long production for a bush type. I sort them out for cooking, but I’d secretly like to extend the production window on the purplehulls, so I keep them mixed up so there’s a chance of a cross. If I get one, I promise to grow it out and share with all of you.
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I just love the colors.
Hi Kim, after two months, I have six plants. Today I planted more. This time I did not broadcast the cowpeas, but tucked them into the soil. I planted in an area that has mysteriously remained moist this summer.
My cowpeas got off to a slow start, but now that we’re hitting hot weather in my area, they’re lush and flowering, with the first long pods setting. I seem to have a few (but not many) vining types in the mix, so far the others are supporting them a bit but they may escape over the bed edges eventually.
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