A Close Call - The Maupin Pea

This year’s growing out of seed for the Seed Saver Exchange’s seed bank in Decorah, Iowa has gone very well. Of the eight varieties that we have grown for them at Blackberry Farm, the one that was in the greatest danger of being lost was a variety of cowpea, or field pea, from St. Augustine, Florida known as the “Maupin Pea.”

The Seed Savers had only eight seeds to send us, and from those eight seeds, only two germinated. That’s too close for comfort. That’s only two viable seeds away from extinction and the end of the line for that variety.

For me personally, failure was not an option. So every effort went into the nurturing of those two seedlings, which were started in two pots and grown out to a height of 12 inches before being set out in a small plot near our garden shed.

Over the following weeks, I kept constant watch over those two plants, knowing that the survival of that variety was totally depending on those two plants. As the days and weeks passed, the plants began to vine and send runners up the trellising that I had built for them.

When the first violet blooms began to appear, I knew that we were well on our way to saving the Maupin Cowpea. As the first two pea pods began to mature, I counted twelve peas in each pod, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s 24 peas, which is 22 more than I started out with.’ My next thought was that if those 24 peas were the only ones to mature, the grow out would have been a success because those seeds would be available for planting the following year.

We are now in the middle of September, and those two plants have produced numerous pea pods, and the count to date is 745 peas that have been shelled out. It can now be stated that this variety is no longer in danger of being lost. With well over one month of growing season left, the numbers for this variety will continue to increase until the first frost.

A sigh of relief for another variety that was almost lost but now is saved.

John Coykendall, Master Gardener