Pidgeon Peas, the cycle starts again

Last year one of my neighbours was showing me some of their unusual garden plants, one of which was a pidgeon pea and gave me some seeds. I wasted no time in planting them, but with little success. Some germinated, but were weedy, sickly looking plants that died off before I could even get around to transplanting them out.

Picture of the green pods from last season. While I ate a few standing at the bushes, I never really got around to harvesting them in any quantity.

Luckily I was able to buy more seeds from Green Harvest. and these came with their own little bag of peat which had been inoculated with a bacteria called Rhizobium. The seeds were coated with milk and this mix, allowing the plant to better produce it's own nitrogen through a symbiotic relationship.
Needless to say, these grew well and I planted them out last summer, but late in the season.They went on to flower and produce pods, but I didn't get around to harvesting many while they were green and they dried on the bushes. Up until recently they were still hanging around and new flowers were starting to appear so I figured I should chop all the old pods off to give the newly sprouting ends and flowers a better chance.

New flowers forming. After seeing the prolific and pretty flowers last season, I'd almost be happy just to grow these for  the flowers alone.

Now I know that some people grow pidgeon peas like an annual crop, but my neighbours tree, is a tree, and quite a solid one. He told me that he chops it back hard at the end of every season and it just grows back. So I figured it wouldn't hurt to just chop off chunks of the end growth that held the dried out peas and it would also help to give the asparagus bed some more sunlight at the same time. So hack away I did.

After a while I realised I wouldn't fit much in my bucket, I hadn't realized how many pods were on the bushes, so I started clipping the pods off of the branches, and making a pile of the branches and leaves to add to the compost beds.
.
I trimmed off the bunches of dried pods, threw them in a bucket and took them inside to shell later.

My bucket of ends ready to shell.

After dinner, I sat down at the table and happily went ahead with the task of shelling the pile.

The tip of what was the flowering end, with dried out pods attached.

I realised at some point during my pruning rush that I wasn't going to get everything to fit in the bucket, so I started roughly chopping just the pods off and leaving the branches in a pile to be added to the compost. 

Part way through shelling the pile.It is a bit of a messy job.

I think that next time I do this I'll do the job outside. As you can see from the picture above, I had bits of shell and branches etc all over the place even though I tried to keep it to the table top, it still got on the floor as well. Again all the shells, twigs and bits were kept to add to the compost heap (waste not, want not)

Pidgeon Peas in the bowl up close.

Now I have a nice little bowl of pidgeon peas awaiting culinary inspiration. According to Green Harvest, these little peas are power packed with around 25% protein and around 5 times more vitamin A and C than normal green peas.

My neighbour told me that almost every family in India has one of these trees growing . The dried peas are used to make dahl, but he said that he usually likes to just pull off a bunch of the green pods and snack on them fresh. Green Harvest also suggests that the leaves and  young shoots can be eaten too, and that the plants make great fodder crop for animals.

Me, I planted them as a bit of a windbreak to stop the wind coming down the hill and knocking around plants in my garden beds, and for the peas. As much as the dried peas look promising, this coming season I intend to use the fresh peas as much as possible as an addition to other fresh vegies.

Now I'm on the lookout for a simple Dalh recipe, if you have any suggestions (please bear in mind, I'm not a particularly accomplished cook) please let me know.