When To Plant Cowpeas

Cowpeas take 80 days or more to become ready for harvest. If growing on a vine, they will need some support like a pole or fence during their growth.

Are cowpeas hard to grow?

Cowpeas are relatively inexpensive, easy to establish and manage, grow well under just about any condition, produce a tremendous amount of protein-packed and digestible forage, and deer are extremely attracted to them. Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is a warm-season annual legume that originated from Ethiopia.

Do cowpeas need fertilizer?

Fertilization: N is not required. Cowpea performs best on well-drained sandy loams or sandy soils where soil pH is in the range of 5.5 to 6.5. Excess nitrogen (N) promotes lush vegetative growth and delays maturity. A starter N rate of around 27 lb/acre is recommended for early plant development on low-N soils.

Can you plant cowpeas in the winter?

Don't plant cowpeas until soil temperature is a consistent 65° F and soil moisture is adequate for germination—the same conditions soybeans need. Seed will rot in cool, wet soils (107). Cowpeas for green manure can be sown later in summer (361), until about nine weeks before frost.

Do you soak cowpeas before planting?

Answer: Yes, soaking the amount of pea seed you wish to plant in your garden in a cup of lukewarm water overnight will help the seed to absorb water and shorten the amount of time they need to germinate.

Do whitetail deer like cowpeas?

Cowpeas are a viny plant that deer love – and often overgraze before it matures. Cowpea, also known as black-eyed pea or iron-and-clay pea, is a viny, warm-season annual legume that provides palatable, high-protein summer nutrition for deer.

Do I need trellis for cowpeas?

Because beans are nitrogen-fixers (they work with the bacteria in the soil to get all the nitrogen they need), additional nitrogen fertilizer is unnecessary. Cowpea vines grow quickly. Provide a trellis for them to climb or allow beans to grow wild, and they will become entangled and massed together.

Do cowpeas add nitrogen to soil?

Part of the legume family, cowpea roots produce nodules that house microbial life. In this symbiotic relationship, cowpeas produce carbon for the microbes and in turn the microbes produce nitrogen for the plants.

How long soak cowpeas before planting?

Overnight is usually good. Many sources recommend 8-12 hours and no more than 24 hours. Again, too much soaking and the seeds will start to decompose. If you use very hot water, the soaking time will decrease.

How far apart should cowpeas be planted?

Spacing Requirements: Plant the cowpea seeds 2-3 inches apart, ½ inch deep directly into warm soil. Time to Germination: Cowpeas are quick to germinate.

How do you increase cowpea yield?

Our results indicated that applying the Bradyrhizobia inoculant together with P and K fertilizer could increase cowpea grain yield more than 200%, with about 50% increase of dry matter yield.

Do cows like cowpeas?

Cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) and lablab (Lablab purpureus) are fast growing, annual, summer forage legumes. They are excellent quality crops for fattening both sheep and cattle, and are also regarded as good feed for milking cows.

How cold can cowpeas tolerate?

If snow has fallen and has covered the peas, the plants can tolerate temperatures as low as 10 degrees F. (-15 C.) or even 5 degrees F. (-12 C.) without suffering too much damage.

Are cowpeas frost tolerant?

Cowpeas are heat and dry tolerant but frost will finish them. Can be grown in cooler areas if they are started under cover and planted out after last frost.

How much nitrogen do cowpeas fix?

Other grain legumes, such as peanuts, cowpeas, soybeans, and fava beans, are good nitrogen fixers and will fix all of their nitrogen needs other than that absorbed from the soil. These legumes may fix up to 250 lb of nitrogen per acre and are not usually fertilized (Walley et al., 1996; Cash et al., 1981).

Can you plant cowpeas with corn?

The cowpeas are typically planted after the corn, drilled over top of the corn planting. This is usually done in a perpendicular direction to the corn rows, but parallel planting works as well.

Do you need to inoculate cowpeas?

Because cowpeas are members of the legume family of plants, they can benefit from an application of a soil inoculant designed for beans and peas, prior to planting. The inoculant will enable the plants to take nitrogen from the air to use as fertilizer, which can increase crop yield and quality.

What happens if you don't soak beans before planting?

While you can speed germination of many seeds by soaking in water overnight, don't soak beans before planting. Bean seeds lack the hard outer shells that need pretreatment to speed sprouting. Soaking bean seeds generally results in poor germination; instead, plant in warm, moist soil for best results in the garden.

Why should you not feed corn to deer?

Unhealthy “Junk Food” As ruminants, deer have a specific blend of microbes in their stomach that break down their naturally high-fiber diet. Large amounts of carbohydrate-rich, low fiber foods like deer corn can disrupt this microbiome — leading to bouts of severe diarrhea and dehydration that could be deadly.

What is a deer's most favorite food?

Deer will primarily eat browse (woody portion of leaves and stems), forbs (broad-leaved plants), mast (acorns, apples, etc), and grass. Although these are the main foods deer like to eat, the quantity of these different foods differ throughout the year and the region you are hunting.