Everyone's Pea Projects?

[Steph S]

Yeah, weird weather swings are more or less a specialty here, and it definitely affects when the pea plants decide to flower.  We've had late flowerings from extra early plantings, that can be blamed on longish exposure to temperatures near freezing.  And then we've also had late flowerings from later plantings, where they just didn't dig in and flower while we were still in the 'heat' phase.

Earliness is always a good thing.  Earliness at least limits how long they can play the waiting game, I should think.   Short peas like Gold Harvest and Margaret McKee, they do seem to go on and flower regardless of the temperature stress.

Realistically, building some trellising and installing drip irrigation is going to take me a couple of years.  But I am pretty serious about it, the more unpleasantly hot summers we have, the more I feel that I should be as generous with my water footprint as I can, for the overall habitat value for any and everything living here.  I have a deep well and never short of water, but also not up for hand watering miles of stuff, for sure.  Some kind of irrigation has to be in place to deal with the bad heat.

[Diane Whitehead]

It's fortunate that the leaves taste good.

[galina gardiner]

My first ever pea of my own breeding was a yellow wide and long podded, sweet tasting mangetout aka snow pea.  Just following Carol Deppe's advice, whose book had me truly fascinated! Since then I have been breeding with that variety - a red mangetout/snow pea, a red snap, a larger than Opal Creek yellow snap, an extra long sweet green pea and more.  I have made crosses with pink and with ar blue flowers and with crown peas for multiple flower trusses too.   

I very much sympathise with you Steph.  The voles, which were the bane of my gardening life, have now discovered my new garden too, after 2 years of blissful absence.  I again need to stick a plastic bottle with bottom cut off around every important plant when planted out as seedling.  This allows plants to grow through the neck, leaving the protective bottle on all season.  For this reason I mostly breed with tall varieties.  The bottle pushed into the ground around the plant seems to deter voles, well at least that happened in our old garden reliably. 

I have also managed 2 breeding seasons in a year, by using just large enough seeds without drying.  This was more difficult in our old garden, because of severe autumn mildew problems. Never three generation though, congratulations Diane.  Greenhouse space is too precious for other crops to use on peas for me. 

Not every project gets advanced every year or I would be growing nothing other than peas. Next year I will follow up on the strange mutating flowers I found this year, to see whether it was a change for one year only or whether that change is for keeps.  A sweet snap pea with blue flowers is still a long way off, but will get advanced too.  A large yellow mangetout with red dots likewise. When I sit down and play with all my pea seed packets in winter, I develop the rest of my to do list for next year.

Part of breeding is planning, what genes to use for what intended purpose and crossing to order, so to speak.  The other part is observing and following up what happens, whether I can explain it genetically or not.  I happily do both and we eat the very many less desirable outcomes, which after all are all entirely useful in the kitchen.  The most important gardening consideration here is self sufficiency, including seed saving, as far as possible.  And since moving to an entirely different climate also crop adaptation where possible, including selecting for earlier maturity.  But pea breeding and following up other interesting happenings in the garden, comes a close second.   

   

[AndrewB]

I'll need to either edit this post or post more posts as sometimes I forget which projects I'm working on. With limited space and limited time I have to often rotate which pea projects I'm working on and even rotate crop projects of different species in general.

I'll also try to attach more photos. Here is a photo of some of the biskopens hybrids from last year.



Of the ones I can think of these are the pea projects I'm working on or would like to work on:

Red-podded snow pea with good flavor. Think I may finally have one worth releasing. Just need to double check pod color stability.

>I'd like to cross with a pink flowered variety to create a lighter red. They seem to look like purple pods when they age and get older.

>an unexpected off-type from this was a large-ish green podded snow pea that tastes really good. I saved seed despite it not being on my radar. It probably comes from the cross with 'Midnight Snow'.

Alternate parsley pea style mutant.

Wild peas: P. elatius hybrids and P. fulvum hybrids. These may have heat tolerance, resistance genes to bugs, and are extra extra early flowering.  The fulvum hybrids have unique sweet-pea like flower colors.

> I kinda like the pod shattering gene and I think it would be clever to breed that wild gene into a nice modern snap or snow pea to create a self-sowing pea variety. It would make saving seeds sort of difficult, but it wouldn't really matter since they would plant themselves. Probably would need to be a non-wrinkled seed variety.

Purple & black seeded peas. Would like to combine these with yellow pods for contrast. Haven't made much progress on this project as I've made no crosses.

Been starting to select my "large podded" mix into those that are extra early or have double pods. I've found some that have pink flowers, so it seems this population has some old crosses of mine that I didn't know about and may be distinct from the original three varities this was started from (Bijou, Carouby de M., and Green Beauty)

> Would like to create a wrinkled seeded "large podded" variety.

Giant yellow snow pea (not sure if I've made progress on these, maybe good yellow snow peas, but not the large podded gene)

'Canoe' hybrids with "large podded", but I've made no crosses. I think the large podded gene can combine with the 12+ peas per pod gene (ion?).

A new extra dwarf cold frame pea for winter growing. I grew out seed for 'lynx' AWP this summer. Haven't made any extra dwarf crosses with "large podded" or others, but sent lots of seed out to collaborators. 'Tom Thumb', 'orange-pod' and others are excess dwarf varieties.

Tried combining orange-pod with yellow pods underneath to get a golden pod color. Didn't seem to do much. Still have seed.

I know I'm forgetting some... I'll come back and edit this post as I remember or find my notes and various seeds.

[Steph S]

Many thanks @galina gardiner for the bottle tip! 
I have no doubt that vole management is going to be front and center here going forward.  So destructive. I think they were attracted by the grains and ate everything else while they were waiting.
 
It is really exciting to hear about all the projects people are working on.
Earliness does seem to be a common theme, and I'm wondering, what are the absolutely earliest peas?
I measured mine from sowing date of soaked seed to first flower when trialing a couple of years ago, and iirc Margaret McKee was earliest at 40 days, Gold Harvest 42.  I haven't tried a really early planting for those, which in past experience can set the peas back to the point of lateness, but maybe I should be trialing for a pea that doesn't go into 'late flowering' mode when exposed to cold.
The earliest plantings may have an advantage against voles, because the perennials are not up and there's no cover for them. 

[AndrewB]

De novo super-early progeny in interspecific crosses Pisum sativum L. × P. fulvum Sibth. et Sm
Hatice Sari, Duygu Sari, Tuba Eker, Cengiz Toker
Scientific Reports 11 (1), 19706, 2021


This study examined de novo super-early progeny, referred to as much earlier than that of the earlier parent, which flowered in 13–17 days and pod setting in 18–29 days after germination, discovered in F2 and studied up to F5 derived from interspecific crosses between garden pea (P. sativum L.) and the most distant relative of pea (P. fulvum Sibth. et Sm.). De novo super-early progeny were found to be earlier by about one month than P. sativum and two months than P. fulvum under short day conditions in the F5 population. In respect of days to flowering and pod setting, de novo super-early progeny had a relatively high level of narrow sense heritability (h2 = 82% and 80%, respectively), indicating that the selections for earliness in segregating populations was effective for improvement of extreme early maturing varieties. De novo super-early progeny could be grown under heat stress conditions due to the escape ability. Vegetable types were not only high yielding but also free of any known undesirable traits from the wild species, such as pod dehiscence and non-uniform maturity. It could be considered complementary to "speed breeding", possibly obtaining more than six generations per year in a suitable climate chamber.

I noticed that the P. elatius hybrids were also about a month earlier than typical Peas. They were about the same as the extra dwarf varities which are only a few inches to 1ft tall and are also early flowering because of the short interludes. But the hybrids are probably standard dwarf height of 2-3ft tall. I believe the domestic parent of one of the hybrids was Alaska, which is anyway known as being a fairly early variety.

[Cathy A]

I've read that pea shoots make a good pesto, but haven't tried it. They are certainly easier to grow here than basil is.

The recommended variety for a pea-based pesto was Dwarf Gray Sugar Pea. Has anyone tried that variety?

[galina gardiner]

Many thanks @galina gardiner for the bottle tip! 

The earliest plantings may have an advantage against voles, because the perennials are not up and there's no cover for them. 

Sadly not in my experience, as they home in on what is available and in the early garden that is predominantly and invariably the peas.  Picture of bottle garden for you.  These are all F2s of a breeding line. 

[Steph S]

Wow... those hybrids are insanely early..  just what we needed!
Love the idea of speed breeding as well.

Great bottle garden...  I will have to consider combining with other protection, for the bigger pests (bunnies) that would love to take a snip from the tip.

[Ferdzy]

I've read that pea shoots make a good pesto, but haven't tried it. They are certainly easier to grow here than basil is.

The recommended variety for a pea-based pesto was Dwarf Gray Sugar Pea. Has anyone tried that variety?

What an interesting idea. I haven't tried them in pesto, but I think I will.

I have grown pea shoots - or more accurately pea tips - for use as a vegetable. In Chinese (one of, transcribed, etc) they are called "dau miu". Dwarf Grey Sugar is a popular one for this but you can use just about any (as far as I know) of the snow peas - the lack of fibre in the pods extends to the young leaves as well which makes them good to eat. As grown as a Chinese vegetable, they are much further along than the pea shoots you can sometimes get locally and I like them much better. They are much leafier and less "stemmy".

I grew Dwarf Grey Sugar one year and it was anything but dwarf for me; I think it hit 4 or 5 feet. It was fine but I have been more interested in pursuing other snow pea varieties and have settled on Norli for very early, rather determinate snow peas to start the season and Carouby de Maussane for enormous but tender ones once the Norli are past.

I keep meaning to do this more often than I do. I plant some peas just for the leaves then end up leaving them for the pods. The gardener in me beats out the cook, and I just can't bring myself to harvest the plants so early. (Picking the leaves does mean that you really won't get any pods to speak of later in my experience.)

[Cathy A]

I grow them for shoots in the winter, inside under lights, where there is not enough space to grow them the stage where they would produce pods.

In the cool outdoor seasons, I grow peas only for shelling, and grow lettuce, spinach, mustard, and claytonia for fresh greens.

Think about pea shoots as a winter green!

[Ferdzy]

 Yeah, I have not grown any indoors greens; we don't have a lot of space and we have a lot of cabbage and frozen veg generally. But I have been thinking of doing a few trays of lettuce, mache, and yes, maybe some peas this winter.

It's so mild here I am still getting greens from the garden but that's coming to an end and I should start some soon.

[AndrewB]

I feel bad for never coming back and updating my projects. I'll settle for just this year's goals.

As always I never have enough space. Also thought I was moving at the end of June. That has extended until February.

I am focusing mostly on the red-podded peas. They are so close it's killing me.

Also focusing on growing out some of the biskopens hybrids. I think those may be finished enough. I may name them 'Walter' and possibly 'Bishops Fringe' or possibly 'Rat's Rook". I think these are probably finished enough. Basically the best combo between Biskopens graert and Dwarf Grey Sugar. Early, dwarf, red seeds, wrinkled seeds, and edible pods. One strain has purple pods, so I should probably give those their own name.

I also am going to try and do a cross for the dwarf cold frame pea project on EFN.

And I'm growing out my pink flowered large podded peas specifically because these ones had pink flowers.

The many many other peas projects and interestingly rare genetics are on hold.

Solid collaborators are welcome. I would love to turn these projects into a seed business or finished and named varities, but I may need help to do so.

[Steph S]

Looking forward to see your pics of the biskopens lines, Andrew!

I did manage to get some F2 peas last summer, but the rodent situation is a big hurdle.  Nothing up here yet but the earliest (crocuses, garlic, chives etc).  My car meanwhile ended up in the shop with fuel injectors chewed through etc.  Not something I expected (or ever heard of) for rodents to get under the hood.

Early plantings are pretty much out of the question, even if it does warm up.

[AndrewB]

I found two ferral planted pea plants beginning to flower today at my parents property across town. They are likely self planted from shattering pods from the pisum elatius x 'Alaska' domestic hybrids that were planted roughly in that spot a few years ago. I'll have to try and go back and collect seeds.

But the combination of ultra early flowering and self-sowing seems like a winning combination to me. Even my extra early planted red pods have not flowered yet. I will need to try and pursue these wild peas going forward next year and beyond. If these could be combined with ultra tasty edible genetics and high productivity then there would be no need to even collect and save seeds as they would readily self sow every year.