Why not grow something different in 2025? Exploring unusual legumes
Resilience 3 January 2025
Welcome to the January 2025 edition of Resilience, the monthly post that goes out to paid subscribers. I'm Sally Morgan, an organic gardener and botanist who loves to experiment. Here you can read about matters relating to climate change, sustainability, organic gardening and growing veg, helping you to become a climate savvy gardener.
Happy New Year !
This month’s feature delves into the potential of growing some less common legumes. With a changing climate, gardeners must remain open-minded about what they grow. For over a decade, I’ve been trialling legumes that are not typically grown in the UK, though they may be staples in other parts of the world. For those already experienced with these crops, your tips and advice would be invaluable!
Growing these legumes comes with an element of risk; some years, the weather may favour them, while other years could be disappointing. For example, 2024 was a challenging year for some of these legumes due to the wet weather.
Here are nine unconventional legumes to consider adding to your kitchen garden in 2025:
Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum)
Most of us are familiar with chickpeas or garbanzo beans. As the world’s third most widely grown legume, chickpeas thrive in Mediterranean climates, India, Ethiopia, and Central and South America. With warmer summers and extended autumns becoming more common in the UK, chickpeas could be worth a try.
I’ve been growing chickpeas in my kitchen garden for around eight years. They’re straightforward but unpredictable. They loved the heatwave of 2022 and rewarded me with a heavy crop, but 2024 was disappointing, with many empty pods that were a result of the wet weather.
Chickpeas form sprawling plants with feathery leaves. They prefer well-drained soil in a sunny location and don’t require particularly fertile soil, in fact too much nitrogen can lead to lush growth and leave them prone to fungal diseases. Chickpeas need a long, warm summer with temperatures ideally above 20°C and don’t require too much watering. They’re well-suited to East Anglia, where warm, dry summers are common, and climate trends suggest even longer, warmer autumns ahead.
If you’re considering growing chickpeas, choose a variety suited to European conditions. I save my own seed, but my original variety was ‘Principe.’ While some recommend using a bacterial inoculum to boost yields, I’ve grown chickpeas successfully without it, although I don’t focus on high yields. For fresh green peas, harvest pods when swollen and firm; for dried chickpeas, leave pods to mature fully. It’s best to wear gloves when harvesting, as chickpea foliage secretes a malic acid dew in hot weather that can irritate the skin.