hi moana,

chickpeas are pretty easy to grow. treat them pretty much like regular peas or beans. they like a loose, well drained soil that's rich in organic matter (humus). being legumes, they do not need a soil that is rich in nitrogen, as they 'fix' (harvest) their own from the air. They will in fact contribute this nitrogen to the soil after the end of their season (cut plants off @ soil level leaving roots in the ground). they do enjoy potassium and phosphorous, so some seaweed dug into the soil prior to planting can be beneficial, or fertilising with liquid seaweed or comfrey soultion during growth (see fertilisation section of garden guide for info on these home made fertilisers). They like quite a bit of sun if possible.

The plants grow as bushes - up to 50cm tall and 50cm wide. Space plants about 30 cm apart - a bit of overlap makes most efficient use of the space. They will become covered in pods which each house 1-3 chickpeas.

Once the pods begin to develop, avoid overhead watering, as the pods are susceptible to moisture-related disease problems (molds, etc) so when you can, water direct to the ground.

The seeds are ready for harvest when the pods begin to dry out - or are at least decently plump. In large-scale cultivation situations, the plants are left until all of the pods are semi dry and then harvested all at once. The more patient home gardener may prefer to harvest pods as they mature, however personally I still opt for a single harvest option. basically if you wait until the pods are dry enough to crack open easily, just harvest the whole plant and shake it over a tarpaulin or similar, and separate the seeds out from other detritus by sieving, shaking, wind sorting (dropping seeds from standing height during a medium to stiff breeze, lighter stuff blows away while seeds fall into bucket), etc.

Seeds can be further dried by sun or oven drying. If you are saving the seeds to grow again next year, don't let them get above 50 degrees or so during the drying process.

Because we are starting these seeds from store bought stocks (I am growing some this season too, from bulk bin chick peas), they are potentially not yet ideal for Dunedin conditions. Because of this, we need to try to save the seeds only from the best preforming plants, for use again next year. Eat the rest. That way we are gradually selecting for plants that do better in the Dunedin conditions.

Thanks for your post moana, and I look forward to updates about how your plants are going!

Are they frost tender?

 I have about 30 bulk buy chic peas sprouting, just to select for seed. Keen to scope them too, never grown them before :) Will update on progress late summer!

If anyone wants to try growing chicpeas this year then NOW is the time to be planting them...

For me, the jury has returned on their deliberation of growing chickpeas in Dunedin at a home-garden scale and the verdict is - grow Broad Beans instead!

You can use broad beans for many similar applications that you'd use chick peas for (falafel, hummus), but your yeilds will be about 10x higher with broad beans.

From my experiments growing chick peas I've realised that you probably really need to grow them on a fairly large scale to get a truly worthwhile yeild... and it is more time than its worth to be hand shelling pods with just 1 or 2 beans in them. That's why combine harvesters were invented! haha...

never underestimate  peas!   They are tasty,  easy to grow, attractive and are actually one of the highest bio-mass field crops for our region! You better believe it! 

Peas are way better than beans.   I'll challenge anyone who thinks otherwise!  

And chick peas don't even make it to the starting blocks!