Pea Breeding in 2022

[Steph S]

Great to hear you're getting those, Andrew!   I can't wait to see the orange flowers . 

[AndrewB]

There are so many peas I want from this lady. Anyone in Canada willing to get some for me?

https://mandysgreenhouse.com/heirloom-seeds/peas/


I think i have a gardening problem..... I'm crazy......

[Diane Whitehead]

I sent an order to her yesterday, and I have bought from her every year.

However, she lists a lot but has only a few for sale each year.

Send me a pm of what you want, and I might have it.

[B. Copping]

Andrew, this variety may be fn, fna.
Also a snow pea...

[Diane Whitehead]

Yes, I have Snowbird growing and will be selecting for three pods.

[AndrewB]

Oh, nice!

I requested 'Snow Wind', but I don't think it is multi flowered.

But these ones I did request for multi flowers / pods:

X78123, Quad, Aska, & Tripod along with good disease resistance genetics.

[AndrewB]

Interested in 'Large Manitoba' or 'Manitoba Large'. Seems to be an extra dwarf with extra large pods. Might mesh well with the cold frame pea project.

[Steph S]

Speaking of large pods, I just got "Japanese Climbing Snow Pea" from Salt Spring, which is supposed to have extra large pods - he also says it's a heavy producer and bug resistant, which I think is interesting. Never heard of a bug resistant pea before.  It's also very tall, but hey, I'm all about makin em shorter so, why not?
I also got another soup pea "Latvian Soup pea" to trial.

The "shoot peas" which I got large packets of from Rainbow Seeds for cover crop experiments, look to be Austrian Winter Pea and "Canadian" or Trapper pea.
I'm wondering whether these peas could actually be planted as early as grains, due to their cold tolerant reputation?
We've tried planting garden peas extra early here and they produced extra late, as a sort of revenge I suppose.
But now I'm thinking, maybe I should fire a few of those heirloom soup peas in with the AWP/Trappers, just to see if they have more tolerance of our frigid spring.
It would be a benefit, for sure, to be able to plant peas in April as soon as the frost is out of the ground... 

[Diane Whitehead]

Japanese Climbing Snow is my favourite snow pea.

[Ferdzy]

Andrew, I just responded to your message about Large Manitoba, before I saw this. I know it is described as short but mine were easily 3 feet long. They are not a pole pea, but neither are they really short in my experience. Also my conclusion is that a lot of the heights given for peas are for when they first start to flower, and then they keep going from there... sometimes for quite a distance.

[Steph S]

Hmmm after reading some of that pdf which Andrew linked, it seems that cold tolerance in peas is linked to late flowering.  When the cold tolerance genes are activated, the plant will flower late.  So that explains our failure to get early peas from an early planting.
Unfortunately it also means it may not be possible to breed for serious cold tolerance with an early production of peas. 

I got some pods eventually from the Sugar Sprints that I had in the greenhouse, just starting to flower when it got too cold to carry on.  One flower opened and just hung there for a month at temperatures close to freezing.  I brought them indoors to the office window.  They started by dropping the whole first round of blossoms with no pods.  Afterwards a second round came on and made nice pods.  And then some more.  But now the plants are drying up a bit, and the last round of pods has shrunk to one or two peas.    Anyway, they were tolerant of the cold and showed no damage, but it had a major impact on all of those ready to flower bud primordia or whatever.
So the rewards of cold tolerance weren't optimal.

[Diane Whitehead]

Some of the Saltspring seeds I just bought have qualities you may like to breed with:

Russian Sugar Pea  brought to Saskatchewan by Mennonites.  Blue and mauve flowers.

Rembrandt Snow Pea   very sweet flavour   yields all summer if picked regularly

China Snow Pea   very hardy and sometimes survives a west coast winter

[Greenie DeS]

With regards to planting peas like/with grains, I put the "Bouchard" dwarf soup pea in on May 11 with my grains last year (it was late for grains, but we had a month of frost after that still) and got the completely dried pods harvested on Aug 11. Not sure how that compares with what you're looking for. They really are very dwarf plants, maybe 12" at most.

[Diane Whitehead]

I just got "Japanese Climbing Snow Pea" from Salt Spring, - he says bug resistant, which I think is interesting. Never heard of a bug resistant pea before. 

I'm not sure whether you meant you don't get pea weevils back in Newfoundland, or that all peas get them.

[Steph S]

TBH I am not too familiar with insect pea pests, have never seen a pea weevil here.  Fresh eating peas have never been bothered by a serious pest here that I know of.  OTOH when growing rather a lot of soup peas last year, I did have some minor damage by the pea moth.  At least that's what the damage looked like to me.   I believe they lay their eggs at the flower stage, and when the peas are left to dry on the vine, you find they have bored a hole leaving frass as they eat their way out, I believe. 

I sometimes see miners on peas, they do some damage to the leaves but is not too serious.  More recently I have seen what looks like miner damage on the peas themselves - white streaks - on the sugar sprint that's growing in my office.   Thinking I should finish off the peas and put the vines out to compost while it's still frosty.
Actually I should take a pic of that, and perhaps we should have some threads here about the pests of our crops, as pest resistance is an important trait.
Also, there's no telling what new pests will show up here due to climate change and the general spread of things north.