Pigeon Pea Project

05/27/2026

It's official: I'm tired. I'm going to close our Etsy seed store for a 2-3 weeks to breathe and enjoy the things around me. What's that? Lots of food growing and beds needing weeding; piles of various dried seeds that need processing and some still in the ground, waiting to fall if I don't hurry up; a new privacy fence to enjoy our deck with a little more coziness; and music. We enjoy just jammin for stress relief -- almost always improv (making it up as we go) but it will give us some time to get that Pigeon Pea Song recorded a little better as well.

If you are also tired, try leaning into the "why" you do what you do and enjoy those things for a little bit. That's Hope Skinner on guitar and I just try to not get in the way too bad with drums. We hit 800 sales on the Etsy store so I will look forward to reopening it with some great seeds aimed toward Fall.

05/23/2026

Tomatoes coming in hot..........

05/23/2026

Blue Kitchen Inc. is the corporation name of our nonprofit that is home to the Pigeon Pea Project. It's our main public-facing project that gets the most attention.

Blue Kitchen Inc. a 501(c)(3) is supported financially by our online seed store, which are seeds and purple sweet potato slips grown in Central Florida. Our projects support our nonprofit pillars of improved mental, neurological, physical and/or soil health and also includes "Strings Within Reach," a guitar-repair/rehoming service that gets guitars into the hands of someone who wants to play (either as a beginner or a guitarist who maybe hasn't played in years). We have a couple of other side projects that are in the works in one fashion or another including Drum For Life - A Manual for Longevity, which is an ebook currently in the works, but paused for the spring/summer grow season.

So maybe it's time to tell you more about our cofounders.

Kumari - Kumari is a licensed practical nurse, licensed massage therapist, and former news journalist, making mid-life career changes along the way from newsrooms-to-massage rooms-to-labor/delivery rooms and now, behind a desk in healthcare. Working on the seed store, growing food, sharing on social media without a heavy-handed "sales" approach seems to boost mental and physical health in very personal ways and is a continuation of gardening efforts that started at 8 years old!

Hope -- Hope spent 36 years working in the tech industry as a software engineer and developer and recently left that industry but finds passion in playing guitar, which she has done for 47 years! Her professional work spanned from Space Shuttle projects to Cloud security. Hope enjoys home improvement projects and is as comfortable with a drill in the attic as she is behind the keyboard helping with tech issues -- maybe moreso. She holds a real estate license and manages several rental properties including using those residential yards for growing food in collaboration with the Pigeon Pea Project. Hope might be found making loaves of sourdough and walking it down the street to give a neighbor or restringing a guitar to share with someone who dreams of playing while continually learning about personal training, exercise and nutrition.

We are married with five grown children, all doing well with the youngest still in the college and the others working in their chosen professions. We're quite proud of them and the people they've become. We are a diverse, growing family and celebrate our differences as well as shared values.

Thank you for following our page. Our next sale on our Etsy seed store will make 800 sales, with free seeds going out with every order, handwritten notes of well wishes, correspondence with customers who have shared their good results and a real sense of gratitude. The store's sales will cover our first $500 "no age limits" scholarship, with application available on our website bluekitchen.org.

Blue Kitchen is named after our own favorite room in the house: The place where our blended family, differences and all, found common ground, shared love of aromatic dishes including curried pigeon peas (!), and the place we all seem to pause and chat with each other.

We hope our page educating about this incredible Cajanus cajan plant will represent the things important to us which is mutual caring/sharing/educating, which is something nearly all of us can do in some way.

Peace,
- Kumari and Hope

(Pictured from left: Hope and Kumari)

05/22/2026

Love this one! Will be trying it! Thanks for sharing Carlos Mendez de Pájaro!

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EJvQ2qC2W/?mibextid=wwXIfr

05/22/2026

So, if you happen to catch me out in the world I could start talking to you about pigeon peas. It's weird, I do know that. But if it happens at a local pile of free mulch/compost, you might also be just as crazy about plants. So it was with Maryanne. I'm shoveling. She's shoveling and it starts with "Whatcha growin?"

It leads to shared seeds, garden updates texted back and forth, and this crazy thing! Meet the Cucuzza squash that Maryanne grew and left on my porch. Are you kidding me?? This thing was FOUR feet long!! Of course I saved seeds. Of course I pan sautéed some with onion. Of course I'm planning a squash casserole (her idea and says its delicious).

You know what else is really cool? I have no idea what religion she is. I have no idea who she voted for for governor, president or school board. What I do know is we share values, interests, and a love of growing food and trying new varieties - especially those that thrive in our heat.

Before someone thinks we are suggesting that we're faithless and opinion-less about policies in our community, state and world, one would be so sorely mistaken. I think I've grown a few angel wings for my restraint in not launching into diatribes about fill-in-the-blank news. But who needs more of it? I'd much much rather share and meet people where we have common values and concerns and let's leave this place called Florida, Planet Earth better than we found it. And let's do it together, starting with a simple "Whatcha growin'?. ?

UPDATE: I added a photo of the cucuzza casserole I made this afternoon. Just made it up and it turned out great and is almost all gone now after the hungry ones came in the door. You need to peel them well, clean out the seeds (cut to one side more than in the dead-center if you plant to save seeds otherwise you will slice through a bunch of seeds; I found out but still was able to save a bunch); dice up the squash, add onion, garlic, broth, some flour (I didn't measure), diced celery, shredded cheese, one egg, mix it all well and just keep adding some flour and milk or kefir or cream until it seems like it's thicker than runny, but not as this as baking into a cake!; add some salt/pepper or other seasonings to taste and bake on about 375 until it basically looks done. I just used ingredients we had on-hand, so I used a bit of kefir for the "cream" aspect and it worked out fine. Will do this again, probably with the giant zucchini a neighbor gave me. This veggie trading thing is sweet!

05/20/2026

We got a question via messenger "How to you eat them?" Thought we'd share our reply in case anyone else wonders:

"One of the first things we did when we started this page and our nonprofit was a cookbook. It's here if you'd like to get it: https://read.amazon.com/sample/B0CXD8W1H6?clientId=share

Otherwise, you can eat the peas while green, cooked alone or with coconut milk or in stews, soups, or like edamame. You can wait till they dry and eat them like you might prepare any dried bean -- pinto, kidney, black beans. We substitute them a lot for black beans in things like chili, tacos, burritos, etc

Our book walks you through making pigeon pea flour (high protein, gluten free) and recipes for brownies and muffins. We use that flour as a dredge for fried dill pickles or chicken nuggets and it fries up crisp, similar to a coarse cornmeal.

We eat a lot of curries so we make curried pigeon peas....the list goes on a one. This is a dietary staple in the Caribbean, India and parts of Africa. Puerto Rico and Jamaica have different national dishes with them. India eats them split, like split peas, and call it "daal".

Our cookbook has how-to grow, why to grow, recipes and lots of research studies cited in it. With two chefs contributing recipes in addition to our own and other followers of this page."

Blue Kitchen Inc.

05/20/2026

Here's what a pile of wood chips will get you. We started this with grass needing mowing. Put down cardboard, put down wood chips, cut a hole through the cardboard and planted stuff. We've replenished the wood chips once. We have some weeds and grasses that will get removed this weekend but as the purple sweet potatoes take over, that will be a nonissue. We lost an avocado tree from this location during the winter, but that's not terrible. When our trees were first planted (Florida prince peach, a plum, avocado), we knew much less than we do today and might pick different trees or placement. The peach died back to its rootstock, so we will try redrafting. Apparently we need TWO plum trees, so we will decide on either another of those or removing this one. Our fig tree is doing well, along with mulberry, olive, loquat, soursop, bananas and blueberries and pineapple. Pigeon peas are sprinkled throughout to grow or chop and leave to feed the soil.

This is in a non-HOA neighborhood and this is taking up less than 1/4th of the yard. Grass area was left for the huge waterslide we could get for a birthday party or the family badminton games. The other side of the yard is planted with our pigeon pea rows.

In addition to the trees, his year we have numerous types of greens from bok choy to amaranth to choy sum. Long beans, peppers of varying sorts, tomatoes of varying sorts, "regular" green bush beans, pinto beans, African potato mint, seminole pumpkin, sun choke, yellow squash, roselle, lemongrass, moringa, a couple of new-to-us squash pumpkin varieties, loofah and lettuces. This is all to say that you most definately can grow food in our crappy construction sand yards, even with no shade around and even without spending much money. We sourced so many of our trees, plants and seeds from trading with others, shopping with backyard nurseries, getting high-quality seeds from FLORIDA sellers who have tested the plants and saved the best for selling. We used free compost from a local tree company when it was available and now make our own with a cheap tumbler and compost pile for yard waste.

Would an HOA allow it all? Probably not for a lot of them, but you certainly COULD carefully plant some of these things without even raising an eyebrow that you are growing food. Large collards look like an ornamental; red amaranth looks like a red coleus and could be a border; onion tops look like monkey grass and could ring around a tree; pigeon peas can be trimmed to look like a flowering shrub; put your sprawling seminole pumpkins and tomatoes in the backyard. I would do it, take photos for a year and then go to my HOA to change the rulebook.

05/19/2026

05/19/2026

Why grow pigeon peas?

Pigeon peas are EASY to grow. Direct sow seed, water it just a little, let nature do most of the rest and watch this plant grow into a literal tree over the course of several months.

You've heard of "pea protein," right? It's sold in the same big plastic containers that whey protein is for bodybuilders, just a vegan variety. Welp, this plant is going to produce pea protein. High quality nutrients. Easily. But that's not all. This plant, because it grows into a shrub or tree, provides a bit of shade in areas that otherwise had none. This opens up more things to plant that want that bit of shade. So you can plant some of your greens and other things amid a clump of pigeon peas.

If you need some erosion control in a certain area, their roots run deep, not vastly spread out, so it can act as an anchor to your soil. You have a problem with high winds whipping your more sensitive plants or even animals, like a chicken coop. Pigeon pea trees planted on the harsh side can create a windbreak AND shade for that area.

If you have goats, for example, you could plant a half acre with a few pounds of pigeon peas and have fodder for your goats. They will eat leaves, pods, peas and its high quality. Let them get too large and it will likely get too woody for them but they will pick them clean as far up as they can. Use rotating grazing areas and just keep planting more as you move your animals. It's an option to supplement your animals.

We hear a lot about this one, but yes, they are "nitrogen fixers." This is the plant taking atmospheric nitrogen (out here among us in the world) and working WITH soil bacteria (Rhizobium), the roots will create "nodules" in which the bacteria will convert that nitrogen into a useable form for the plant. Here's the thing: The majority of that nitrogen will be used BY the pigeon pea plant itself. The best nitrogen will be when you chop/drop the plant, cut it off, leaving roots in the ground. The growing plant itself will have some nitrogen becoming available to surrounding plants, but the most robust will be when the plant itself is used in the soil. Either way, you're helping the soil. I've pulled up pigeon pea plants that were only 7-8 inches tall and you can see the nodules clearly on the roots. It's incredible.

Lastly, for your mental health. Am I kidding? No. There is something uniquely special about putting a single seed directly into the ground, watering it to watch it emerge, paying attention to its fragility in the early days, seeing a transformation into a tough little tree that will take on the elements, attract pollinators galore to it's beautiful flowers, and then supplying you with highly nutritious food and thousands more seeds to potential plant a field of pigeon peas. If you do that with awareness, I think you will find yourself with gratitude, awe, a "can-do" feeling, and a little more confidence that maybe, just maybe "growing food in full sun in Florida" IS a thing, despite what so many say. Maybe just maybe your thumb isn't black after all -- and what ELSE negative about yourself were you wrong about?

Pigeon peas make a great starter plant for your growing efforts. We think the majority of people who try planting them won't stop there. They WILL think, "what else can I plant?" and they will seek out more information, "right plants for the right place" and will find themselves transforming into a bit of a food forester right on their residential yard.

Not everyone loves having them. One neighbor refused to plant more. "It made too many pea pods!" she said. Too many pea pods. Too much protein. Too much to walk out and pick them or allow a neighbor to. Make it make sense. It's 2026 and we think having "too many pea pods," is a pretty good problem to have this day and age.

We give away free seeds with a self-addressed stamped envelope. See our pinned post for where to send it to.

05/18/2026

We've had a couple (2 exact) of questions come in after posting our Scholarship application, so we will just address them here (in addition to answering direct):

1.) Your application says no age restriction. Can my 15-year-old apply? He is hoping to attend band camp.

Yes! Your teenager can apply. High school graduation is not a requirement. YOU can also apply. We plan to support anyone of any age trying to learn something new -- or deepen their knowledge in an area if it can be connected back to our pillars of mental, physical, neurological and/or soil health. Your 15 year old going to band camp would need to be able to articulate in the application how band camp will connect to one of those areas -- either for himself or as he hopes to share what he learns to help others in those ways. So, maybe he writes how band camp will help him become a better leader, giving him the psychological and physical stamina to do so and what he hopes to do with that, or maybe he tells us that he will learn better skills and hopes to start volunteering playing music at an assisted living center -- and then articulate how music can help those seniors with these pillars as the benchmark. This may also help him think deeper about all the benefits and future benefits of what he's doing with band.

2.) What is your financial cutoff for being eligible?

Answer: We don't have a hard cut-off. Why? Well, we've personally experienced being in career transition -- leaving one decent-paying job to go to another lesser-guaranteed paying entrepreneurial route and being in the middle-class squeeze. It's the space where you make too much to qualify for any kind of help, but too little to live comfortably and pay for anything "extra" like a $400 continuing education class that might help your entire business. All we want to know is a few lines of why the financial help would, in fact, be helpful from that standpoint. You are not required to submit bank statements, check stubs or tax forms. We aren't that prying. We'll trust your words if you tell us it's going to make a difference.

Find the application by following the links in our pinned post. Deadline to apply is July 15, which gives people ample time to FIND a course that could be career or health-altering and let's make it happen!

Areas eligible: Growing food, building soil; making/learning/sharing music in some kind of way; continuing education in areas of healthcare; fiber arts (crochet, knitting, weaving, etc).

Photo of one of my tomatoes I've been stalking for days now.