Pigeon peas

Growing Pigeon Peas

Cajanus Cajun

Pigeon pea would have to be 1 of the most versatile permaculture plants.

I started out expanding this legume shrub in my garden due to the fact it improves soil fertility by repairing atmospheric nitrogen.

But I soon discovered that pigeon pea has numerous much more uses:

It's a staple meals crop that gives great protein. You can use the green peas like fresh peas, and the dried peas like any other dried peas, beans or lentils. (In India they are in fact one particular of the most well-liked pulses. Dhal is manufactured from pigeon peas.) The peas can also be sprouted to make them even much more nutritious, and they can be ground into flour.

Leaves, flowers, seed pods and seed all make nutitious animal fodder. My chickens really like the peas.

The flowers attract bees.

Pigeon peas can be regularly pruned for mulch.

Each time you prune them (and also when the plant dies) the root nodules release nitrogen that can be utilized by other plants.

Their open canopy shelters youthful, delicate plants, but lets enough light through for items to grow underneath.

A hedge makes a good windbreak.

After established they self seed prolifically. Lower down the ones you don't actually want and use as mulch. Depart the ones that increase in the right spots.

They can make a residing trellis for climbers.

They have a quite deep tap root that is capable to break via hard pans and boost the soil structure. It also brings nutrients from the subsoil to the surface.

Apparently the wood can make genuinely good firewood. (I haven't tried that. A reader informed me about it.) No, you will not get enormous logs for heating, just sticks, but they are fantastic to make tiny, quite scorching fires, say for cooking.

That are a great deal of makes use of out of a single single plant, and there are probably much more. You can locate my favourite methods to use pigeon pea in my permaculture backyard on the bottom of this web page.

What Precisely Is Pigeon Pea?

The pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan, loved ones fabaceae) is believed to have originated in India, in which it is even now broadly grown as a food crop. It is also employed extensively as a cover crop, green manure, inter crop and so forth. in several sustainable farming techniques in the tropics and subtropics, and in many home gardens in warm climates.

The plant is a quick lived perennial shrub. It grows to two to four metres and lives for about 5 years. The flowers are yellow or yellow and red. The leaves consist of three leaflets and are a dark green over and silvery underneath.

The fruits are pods, containing 4 to 5 seeds. The seeds can be a variety of colors. Mine are light brown, but they can be cream, grey, purple or black, dependent on the variety.

Growing Pigeon Pea

Pigeon peas will grow just about anywhere. They can cope with bad soils and small water. Of course they will develop faster, greater, better, and reside longer if they have a lot of water and nutrients.

Most varieties are not frost tolerant, though there are some newer varieties that supposedly can manage a bit of frost. If you get freezing winters you can grow them as an yearly crop. Which is not ideal from a permaculture level of see, but it's nevertheless a wonderful meals crop and soil improver.

You develop pigeon peas from seed. There are numerous types of pigeon pea close to the globe, from tall tree like species, to smaller bushes and dwarf varieties. The different varieties also mature at distinct occasions. If you dwell in a cool climate grab a more quickly maturing species.

If you want to consider advantage of the plant's capacity to repair nitrogen then you could have to inoculate the seeds. It depends where you dwell. (See Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria.)

Pigeon Pea is not quite distinct. For inoculation you can use any Rhizobium of the cowpea group. I utilized a Rhizobium that I obtained for my Dolichos lablab seeds and it worked. (I later on identified out that it was indeed a cowpea Rhizobium.)

Planting depth is whatever. Just stick them in the ground, they'll develop. The seeds consider about two to three weeks to germinate. Germination is more quickly in warm soils and takes longer in cooler climates.

Initially the plant grows very slowly. For about 3 months it will search like absolutely nothing considerably is happening, but then they get off.

Flowering and Harvest. Plants can start flowering in as minor as two months, and you could theoretically harvest the initial seeds right after 3 to 4 months. Nevertheless, based on the range and the planting time it can take a whole lot longer, up to eight months.

The plants are day length sensitive and will flower sooner when the days are short.

Pick the pods green if you want fresh peas, or depart them on the plant to dry. Pigeon peas are really heavy croppers and the seed pods grow in big clusters at the end of the branches. It's effortless to collect a very good volume for a meal.

You can prune your plants at any time if you want to use them as mulch. If you want all the peas then the best time is naturally soon after the harvest. Even so, my most vigorous bushes get a good lower each and every handful of months, and they just preserve expanding back larger and stronger.

Pigeon Pea In Permaculture Styles

Here are a few techniques I have utilised pigeon peas:

A hedge or windbreak. Plant them in a row, about 1 to two feet apart. Offering the hedge a regular haircut yields plenty of mulch for nearby plants. At harvest time you have a lot of pigeon peas in 1 location, easy to collect. (I never usually fret about harvesting all the other bushes on my home.)

Plant them close to youthful fruit trees. I maintain trimming them so they are by no means larger than the tree. That way they offer shelter for the tree, but they will not shade it. The trimmings I throw underneath the tree as mulch and of course the nitrogen from the root nodules feeds the tree.

As the tree will get older and taller the trimming is not essential any longer. The pigeon peas will hold growing, self seeding, dying and feeding the tree on their own. I stay out of it, unless I'm hungry and I have run out of pigeon peas elsewhere.

I use pigeon pea as a cover crop throughout the wet season. Our torrential monsoon rains leach almost everything out of the soil, so the more nutrients are tied up in plant matter the much better. For that I just throw the seed around wherever there is unused space (for instance dry season vegetable beds).

When the rains have finished the pigeon peas are cut and employed as mulch or on the compost. The roots keep in the ground and release nitrogen for use by the dry season veggies.

A living trellis. Some of the pigeon peas I only prune right back and then plant a tomato bush underneath (make certain you plant them on the sunny side).

I hate trellising tomatoes. It really is function. Specially getting rid of a dead tomato from a trellis is irritating and needless function. I let the tomatoes climb into the pigeon peas and when the tomatoes are completed I minimize both back to the ground and throw them on the compost collectively. (Or in the chicken pen. Or beneath a nearby fruit tree). Significantly less difficult!

Discover more permaculture plants to make lifestyle less difficult.