Sea Island Red African Pea
igna unguiculata
Seeds per pack ~ 50
Germination: 89% JUL 2024 Packed for 2025
This vegetable seems to have a different name in each section of the country. Sometimes called Southern peas, cowpeas, field peas, crowder peas, and black-eyed peas. Several varieties have historically been cultivated in Africa, and were transported to the Americas via the transatlantic slave trade, hence a new term, African Peas. By whatever name you call them, they’re an old favorite in the South.
The Sea Island Red Pea is an heirloom landrace of cowpea from the Gullah corridor of the Sea Islands. They are an integral part of the cuisine of Gullah speaking people. Gullah is a culture that is associated with the Lowcountry area of South Carolina. The Gullah people of the Lowcountry and coastal areas of South Carolina are culturally the most distinctive African American population in the United States. The Gullah Geechee people have traditionally resided in the coastal areas and the sea islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
The center of diversity of the cultivated cowpea is West Africa, leading an early consensus that this is the likely center of origin and place of early domestication. Charred remains of cowpeas have been found in rock shelters located in Central Ghana dating to the 2nd millennium BCE. By the 17th century cowpeas began to be cultivated in the New World via the Trans-Atlantic slave trade; being used as food and provisions for enslaved Africans transported to the Americas.
Some scholars look to the Mende speaking people of modern day Sierra Leone as the transporters of these peas to the Sea Islands where from 1750 to 1775, 50,000 enslaved Sub-Saharan Africans, predecessors to the Gullah, were kidnapped. They were mainly abducted from "Rice Coast", between modern Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Liberia, due to their expertise and experience in the cultivation of rice.
Cultivation: As a landrace, the Sea Island red pea, tends to have variations in its coloration and size of its seed coat. They should be sown prior to frost, roughly late May and mid-July and climb resulting in the use of a trellis, domestically, and can be grown where both days and nights are warm for a period of 60-90 days.
They should be sown about 1in deep into the soil and approximately 4in apart. They tolerate bad soil and replenish nitrogen in the soil. To mitigate chances of cross-pollination they should be separated by at least 20 ft from other cowpea varieties. For seed saving wait until the pods are dry and crisp.
Culinary Use: These peas can be prepared in a similar manner to the cowpea or black-eyed pea to make hoppin' John, acarajé, or waakye. peas. He has worked with farmers to re-introduce these varieties to the market place. Traditionally, Gullah would prepare the peas by adding them to perloo or by making red peas and rice,
