Everyone's Pea Projects?

[Max Holzapfel]

Does anyone know of a variety that produces "coloured (red/blue) shoots ?
Maybe in the emerging stage?

I think i read something on the homegrown goodness forum but i can´t find it anymore.

Thanks for your inspiring work everyone

[AndrewB]

Does anyone know of a variety that produces "coloured (red/blue) shoots ?
Maybe in the emerging stage?

I think i read something on the homegrown goodness forum but i can´t find it anymore.

Thanks for your inspiring work everyone

I haven't ever really cooked my peas except for a soup pea experiment with Biskopens Graert. So I pretty much only eat them raw.

I am not aware of any that are bocolored red/blue shoots. If you mean more purple or red then you pretty much get them with any purple podded or red podded variety. Like with any anthocyanins they can be manipulated to express deeper by having intense sunlight + very cold water on a daily basis.

Here's a few early photos of my current red planting before they turn red. The second and third photo I'm experimenting with a new macro lens for my phone.

[Max Holzapfel]

Dear Andrew,

thank you for your quick answer.
Yes i meant more purple or more red shoots (should have written that more specific).
Your photos were exactly what i was looking for.
Since i´m mostly eating peas for their shoots in salads and sometimes in stir-fry, i´m interested in breeding different shoot colours.

Do you think growing different blue podded varieties in trays under artificial lights (mimicing intense lightning) while watering them with cold water from below would be an idea to find (respectively boost) anthocyanin expression in the shoots of certain individuals before planting them out ?

[AndrewB]

Yes, I think so. I would get some adjustable spectrum lights. Home Depot here in the US sells such a light, and I have two in my grow tent.

After they have grown to the size you want under white light or red/blue I would switch them to intense blue spectrum lighting or supplement with some UV lights.

I'd be careful with the UV if you go that route so you don't damage your eyes, but the blue light might be sufficient without UV. Anthocyanins are basically nature's sunscreen and also help with heat/cold tolerance.

While I haven't yet released my red-podded variety, Peace Seeds / Peace Seedlings do sell a red snow and red snap. But with artificial lighting you might end up getting the same expression as pure purple podded varieties.

[Diane Whitehead]

I've planted some new peas - dwarf ones on my grandson's new condo balcony.  Renee's Garden has Little Crunch for containers, and Snack Hero for hanging baskets. OSC (in Ontario, Canada) has Little Purple snow peas, and Sugar Lace, a snap, is sold by quite a few companies.

[Adam Igra]

So bijou isnt as productive as the sugar magnolia but its definately the tastiest pea, and it has a lovely texture too. The biggest advantage of the purple peas though is how easy they are to spot and thus harvest: The green peas are almost invisible to my eyes.
Perhaps colouring a good pea is enough of a project.

[Steph S]

I ordered a roll of hardware cloth off amazon to address the vole problem, and not only didn't arrive on time, they're now saying the package is lost.  Definitely getting late to have nothing planted in the ground.

I did pick up a pack of 'Snowflake' and started a mixed batch with Shiraz, for a short container pea setup for my Mom.   Something to munch on but not my precious F2's!
Just to make the options worse, Mom's vegetable garden has been completely overrun with goutweed, to the point that it's not worth fighting it.  The lower garden, it's bindweed and raspberries.... yikes.  Everything invasive made massive progress during this winter, it seems.

[Mike Deyo]

My interest is in intercropping winter soup peas and winter grains (rye or wheat). Several different aspects attracted me to the idea, growing a cereal and protein food together, not having to put up a structure for peas to climb on, the nitrogen fixation of the peas helping the grains and improving soil, a thicker leaf canopy to compete with weeds, and maybe even the peas acting as guy wires to reduce lodging.

I started ~30 years ago, crossing what winter pea varieties I could find, among them Austrian Winter and Romack. I also crossed in a spring fasciated soup pea, and a extra tendril (afila?) spring pea, and I think a dwarf pea, and other peas I got from SESE. Later I got some wild peas from GRIN, from Turkey, Bulgaria and Iran, and crossed them in. Early on I found out the existing winter peas I could find at that time, wouldn't work well for this application. They were too tall growing and too late maturing compared to the wheat or rye. They would be at the top of the grain stems and still going strong when the grain was ready to pick. All that green weight up high would cause it all to lodge in a big mess.

Initially I focused on incorporating the fasciated, extra tendril, and dwarf traits into winter hardy plants. Also when I incorporated the wild peas, they contributed some extra winter hardy traits, but also hard seeds which I needed to back cross to more normal yellow or green peas. I had some even more dwarf plants pop up in the wild crosses, and also some earlier flowering.

I'm at the point now where I am seeing winter hardy fasciated plants of various heights and maturities, winter hardy extra tendril plants from dwarf to tall, dwarf regular leaf plants, and very early blooming plants. The fasciated plants have the advantage of blooming all at once and not getting above a certain height. One fasciated plant this year had dry seed by early June. (It was an exceptionally warm spring). The fasciated plants have the advantage of determinate growth, not keeping growing taller. The dwarf plants have the advantage of shorter distance between nodes, so they they also don't get taller, as long as they are early blooming too. The extra tendril plants have the advantage of really holding the grain stems together well, although less leaf area to shade weeds. I've started growing some of the promising lines in grains, to see how they do. And I'm continuing to cross plants to stack the desirable traits.

[AndrewB]

Thanks Mike,

I remember talking with you about your efforts by email last year, I believe. Really great stuff! Some of your lines may be really worth something and perhaps even separating and sub-selecting for others uses.

I believe I have some seeds from JIC that I originally requested for fasciation or some other trait and found out later that whatever gene they have for the trait I originally requested them for also is linked to extra nitrogen fixing nodules / extra large root clumps for super nitrogen fixation. That would be an interesting breeding avenue to select for!

Some of the Pisum elatius hybrids and Pisum fulvum hybrids really are interesting! I think i
d like to make them a priority grow out this next year.

[AndrewB]

P.s. The EFN cold-frame pea project has been migrated to the new "Pea Improvement Project" on the new EFN on the Citizen Science website. Anyone is welcome to join.

https://citsci.org/projects/pea-improvement-project/

Basically we will be trying to organize and crowd source several pea breeding projects at once. Some of the sub-projects may have overlapping lines or goals.

[Steph S]

I've never tried winter peas but I love the idea of intercropping peas and grains, and tried that a couple of times.  As you mentioned Mike, the height and maturity of one vs the other is key to prevent a big lodging mess.    I tried an especially short and lodge resistant spring barley Black Hulless with Margaret McKee's Baking Pea, and that seemed to actually work fairly well for the peas, not as well for the barley 'trellis' which was slightly overtopped and the heads quite tangled in pea shoots.  Key result was that nothing fell over, fairly remarkable for the windy climate.

Wanted to mention that I made a very late planting of snow peas - mixed sow including Calvert, Tai Chung, Golden Sweet and Avalanche in August.   They started to flower in early October - and by that time our days are rapidly getting short and temperatures on the cool side for growing as well.
Tai Chung flowered first but Golden Sweet was the clear winner for producing pods this late in the year.  Calvert made a pod that was mildewed,  Tai Chung a few pods that were clean, Golden Sweet has made a dozen pods at least.  Still standing after more than half dozen frosty nights, at least three nights down to -2C.

So if anyone decides to develop a 'fall pea crop' variety, I would definitely recommend Golden Sweet as a parent.

[AndrewB]

I actually still have some peas alive and some pods still going. One plant has powdery mildew on it though. But we've gotten down a few nights to 28F and had snow a day or two. It's in the low 30s each night this week.

This is the self-sown pods that shattered during heavy rain sometime in late summer.  These are the pink flowered version of my large podded stain. Some form of Bijou, Green Beauty, or Carouby de Massaune or some hybrid decendant thereof.

At least two of the three or so plants growing look relativity green and healthy without powdery mildew. But I guess we will see. I think I will get some viable seeds either way.


P.s. I had seeds for the AWP variety 'Lynx' and I shared them with others. It looks like I either shared them all or I misplaced mine. So if anyone gets seed of 'Lynx' again I would be interested. One person (probably all) of the people I shared Lynx with had crop failure in a poly tunnel from aphids and no predator insects to eat them.

[Tarruvi]

I grew out some peas in plant pots on the windowsill last year, these were the subjects of my attempt to make red podded peas. The cross was made between Blue Pod Shelling and Yellow Sugar Pod, with about 12-16 F1 seeds being produced. Shortly after I collected the last of the seeds, I planted and grew out the F1 plants in the same windowsill with fresh soil and in their own containers. About 6 plants sprouted and grew much larger than their parents, they produced a total of 61 F2 seeds. Not a lot, probably due to the shortening days and being in plant pots.

Inspecting last year's F2 seeds confirms that what I grew were indeed successful hybrids of BPS x YSP. I was worried about self pollination, but that fear was quelled once I compared the F1 hybrids to their seeds. The F1 plants all had the dominant green pods and purple mottling from the Blue Pod Shelling. But their F2 seeds had speckles, a characteristic of Yellow Sugar Pod seeds.

At first I thought the speckles might have been a disease, but then I had to check the parent varieties and was quickly relieved it was just their aesthetic. Nearly threw them away.

[galina gardiner]

I found it incredibly easy to get red podded shelling peas.  But far more difficult to get red podded peas with edible pods or with snap pods.  Good luck for your efforts here. 

[Tarruvi]

Thanks galina, and good luck to you too!
I also expect most pods in the F2 to be inedible, about 3/4ths. Here's hoping at least one red podded falls in the 1/4th of edible podded plants.