HomeWHENWhen To Pick Purple Hull Peas

When To Pick Purple Hull Peas

Paula,

You can harvest your Purplehull Pinkeye peas whenever you like, depending on how you want to use them, but I agree with the standard advice to shell them once they are 50% purple. If you harvest them earlier than that, they’re impossible to shell but great as snaps. If you harvest them later, they may get too close to maturity and be more like mature dry peas than green mature ones.

GREEN SNAPS: You can harvest them as green snaps fairly early when the pods are narrow and fairly slim and you don’t really see the seeds bulging inside the pods.

GREEN MATURE: You can harvest them at the mature green stage when the peas clearly bulge out to a certain degree in the pods and the hulls are purple. (Save the purple hulls for purplehull jelly.) This is generally when the pods are 50% purple. It often only takes a day or two for or three for purplehull pinkeye peas to go from 50% purple to fully purple, so check them daily.

DRY STAGE: You can leave them until the pods are fully purple and begin to turn a yellowish-tan and are starting to dry and harvest them to use as dried cowpeas. Harvest them before the pods begin splitting open on their own. I don’t recommend this because dried southern peas are very cheap to buy so it wouldn’t be the most productive use of your garden space. Fresh purplehull pinkeye peas, on the other hand, are almost impossible to find at stores, although sometimes you’ll see them at Farmer’s Markets for around $25 per bushel.

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I cannot comment on how they taste raw and green because I don’t eat them raw. Since I don’t eat them raw, I don’t know how the flavor of cooked ones is different from raw ones. I usually harvest and cook them at the green mature stage and use different seasonings for flavor at different times (salt, pepper, Cajun spices, chopped jalapenos, chopped onions, bacon, ham, salt pork, etc. whatever you like to use to give them extra flavor). So, cook them and flavor them to suit you. You are required, by the way, to always serve cornbread (homemade) with black-eyed peas to soak up the liquid!

FREEZING: I blanch them for a couple of minutes and freeze them. Dry peas are so cheap to buy that if all I wanted was dried peas, I’d buy them. I think you lose the ‘fresh, just-picked’ flavor when you dry them and later rehydrate them and cook them. Granted, your home-grown, planted and shelled peas still might taste better, but I am not sure it is worth the work when you can buy dry southern peas for next-to-nothing at the grocery store.

If you don’t like them when shelled at 50% purple, try them when they’re about 75% purple. Honestly, I pick them every 2nd or 3rd day and mine are always a mixture of half-purple, mostly purple, etc. with a few green snaps through in for good measure. It doesn’t matter to me if they’re 50% purple or 80%, I love them all.

I shell them the old-fashioned way…..by hand. Tim and I talked about buying a sheller last year, but never got around to it. I wouldn’t spend my money on one unless I could see a demonstration and see how they handle the peas when they are at the green shell stage. I’ve seen complaints from some people who felt the shellers mangled too many of the peas. Maybe George or Carol have experience with the shellers or know someone who does.

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Dawn

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