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JosephsGarden
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Red-podded peas

I took this photo in my garden a few hours ago.
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It is the culmination of 4 growing seasons worth of toil to create a red-podded pea. The project started by manually pollinating a yellow podded snow pea with pollen from a purple podded snap pea. It is still to early to know if any of these will be useful as snow peas, or snap peas, or shelling peas. They are already useful as soup peas. This is the first preliminary results from the 2014 growing season. I planted about 500 seeds from this project, so there should be lots of opportunities to discover some really clever types of peas.

Parents of the cross:
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Children:
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applestar
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Wow this is really cool, Joseph.

In previous years, I've grown yellow podded peas -- mine was India Gold good to eat as snowpeas -- and purple podded peas -- Blauchokker (sp) Blue good for soup peas.

Keep us posted with updates. I really want to see how this one turns out. 8)

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JosephsGarden
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I'm really enjoying exploring the red-podded pea patches. I'm tasting the pods while they are still on the vine so that I can select for mange tout traits. Lots of pretty peas are showing up. Some of them are even edible! 8)

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When I find something I like I write a note on it so that I can find it later.
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Last edited by JosephsGarden on Tue Jun 17, 2014 11:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

cdog222
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I have a related question - I pulled my snap pea vines today as they were about spent. I had left several pods on the vines to harvest for seed for next year. As I was picking them, several pods were nice an fully formed, while several only had 2 or 3 peas in a short pod. I have very limited experience with saving seed and replanting, but I am beginning to dabble a bit. Joseph - should I'm imply based on your practice of selecting pods with particular traits, that I should not use the peas from pods that are stunted or oddly formed, even if the peas inside seem of normal size and quality? Probably a novice question - I'd throw out the stunted ones, but I would like to maximize the amount of potential seeds if I knew that they wouldn't produce vines full of stunted pods.

Thanks in advance!

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JosephsGarden
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You've hit on one of my primary sorrows about saving my own seed. I tend to save seeds only from the best and finest plants, so I end up sharing the seconds with the food pantry and at the farmer's market...

Whether or not to save the seeds from the runt-pods depends on whether the runt trait is genetically driven or environmentally driven (It's both, but one may predominate). In my garden, the summer heat shuts down pea flowering, so the last pod that the vine produces tends to only have one or two peas in it, even if the same vine might have produced other pods with 5 or 6 peas. In that case I'd feel just fine about saving seeds from the runt-pods. To test this you could save the seeds from the stunted pods separately and plant a small patch next year. I think that they will grow normally.

I have a pea weevil in my garden, so I have to dry the pea seeds down as soon as possible and get them into the freezer to kill the eggs/larva before they hollow out the inside of the pea.

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applestar
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I love the color of those red pods! What color are the peas/seeds when dry? (I assume they are green when fresh)

(Leaving notes on the pods -- :lol:)

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JosephsGarden
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The base color of the pods is yellow, so the pea seeds tend more towards yellow than green. Here's some examples:

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JosephsGarden
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I've been finding lots of red-podded peas in the garden this week. I'm marking them with flags so that I can find them later.
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JosephsGarden
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I'm still working on this project. A few pods are just starting to form. Here's what a couple of them look like:

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applestar
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Are you trying some as flat pods? Are they edible that way? Supposedly Blauschokker Blue pea can be eaten as snowpeas. I harvested my first one this morning but haven't had the chance to try it to find out.

I'm growing Golden Sweet and other regular green snowpeas, so it would be fun to have a mixed snowpea dish. I believe the purplish color will turn olive green when cooked like the purple podded beans so there would still be contrast of colors.

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JosephsGarden
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They are just barely starting to form pods. I expect to be tasting a lot of them in the next few weeks.

These peas need a little bit of acid (vinegar, lemon juice) in the cooking water to retain their red color.

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Gregor Mendel would have been proud of you.

meshmouse
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What a wonderful persuit. So you are saying to select the traits you desire from the particular pod, not so much the plant? There's so much I don't understand but man, that is so cool.

I wonder if the acid in the cooking water would keep purple beans purple, etc. Probably, right? I have some purple snow peas coming in tomorrow, I'll give it a try.

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JosephsGarden
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Yes, acid in the cooking water helps retain the color of beans. And of red sweet corn.

Later on in the season, when they get a little bigger, I will be biting one pod per plant while it's still on the plant . This will let me know which are edible-podded. All of the seeds on one plant share the same genetics, so if one pod is edible, then so are all the rest on that same plant. And their offspring will be too.

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applestar
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I'm DEFINITELY trying acidifying the cooking water! :-() Thanks @joseph :D

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JosephsGarden - thanks for the tip on acidic water and color retention.

Now, I don't mean to drag you down the ditch, but I'm so curious and yet so ignorant about these matters.

It sounds like you're saying that the pods on each particular plant will be consistant (up and down), particularly in color, flavor and quality.

By edible, do you mean whether it's a snow pea, a snap pea a shell pea or does it just suck, flavorwise? Does 'soup' pea mean matured and dried? Which are you looking for? I guess you could be looking for all of them.

Maybe you would consider starting a thread about the whole process you went thru to accomplish this.

Oh, and if you ever needed someone to help you with your east coast, zone 7 trials, I'd be glad to participate.

Enough for now, thank you - meshmouse

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JosephsGarden
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Meshhouse: I've been working on this project for 5 years. My original goal was to develop a red podded sugar snap pea. I may still get there. I may have to start over to get all the traits I want into a single plant. I've passed up lots of great snow peas, in shades of green, yellow, and purple. I've passed up great sugar snap peas in shades of green and purple. I passed up a snow pea that had pods that were absolutely huge (wishing I would have kept that one). I think that I collected something like 7 seeds from my manual crossing of the two pea varieties.

I planted those and got 291 seeds in the second generation. I planted about half of them, and gave the other half away. It was hard to do proper screening that year because the colors of the pods changed between the time they were fresh peas and the time they dried enough to harvest. So much of the seed got collected in bulk and I couldn't do a proper screening for red-podded.

I collected about a pint of seed. Planted 1/3 of it, gave away 1/3, and am storing the rest as a backup archive.

The next year I took surveyor tape into the garden, and flagged the red-podded peas. I took markers into the garden and wrote on the peas what type they were: soup peas, sugar snap peas, or snow peas... I collected only seed that I think was from red-podded plants, ignoring any that were green, yellow, or purple. That single cross could have provided a lifetime of work, and hundreds of new varieties of peas if someone had pursued them... I can't get rid of the nagging feeling that I misplaced my best seed during the winter. Whatever...

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So this spring, I've planted what I think are the best of the best. The red-podded sugar snap trait is the most recessive of the possible offspring of this cross. I still haven't recovered that trait. Perhaps this will be the year it shows up. Perhaps I'll have to make another cross to recover it. Perhaps someone that I shared seed with will discover the holy grail of this project.

I call them a soup pea if they are not good for anything else: not sugar-snap, not snow-pea, not shelling pea. So they get dried and eaten in soups. They are currently a great soup pea, and a fantastic decorative pea. It would be nice to achieve the red-edible-podded trait this year in snow-peas and/or sugar/snap peas.

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sweetiepie
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I love the look of flowers in the garden but I have a hard time "wasting space" on something that just adds color. This is super, what fun!!

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JosephsGarden
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The flowers are pretty too!
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applestar
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They really are very pretty. :D
I'm so looking forward to when you will make them available.
Good luck with the selection process! :-()

meshmouse
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JosephsGarden -

Just to let you know, the acidified water worked out great with my purple snowpeas (about 1 TB Apple Cider Vinegar to about a cup of water). When my purple beans come in, I'll try that as well.

My next experiment will be to try and steam them over acidified water and next - sauted with a little olive oil and vinegar.

How has your search been going this season? - meshmouse

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JosephsGarden
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Oh no!!! I've been distracted from the peas by illness in the family... Last time I was out I discovered some red edible-pod peas and marked them. I need to get out again soon and taste lots more pods. If I don't keep up with it, the season will get ahead of me.

I made some manual cross pollinations recently: Trying to move the red-colored pods into early dwarf shelling peas.

meshmouse
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JosephsGarden -

Sorry to hear about hard family times. Family is always the priority, of course.

If you get the chance, I've re-read this thread, and as I understand it, in theory, of a single plant, all the pods should share the same traits. Is thas right? And their offspring should be true to form, or 'mostly' true to form. Is that right?

So when you are labelling pods (as snow, snap or soup, etc.), you only need to label one pod to label the whole plant, is that right? Boy, I'm saying 'is that right' way too much.

I have more questions, but that's enough for now. And thank you - meshmouse

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JosephsGarden
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meshmouse: You got it... On a single plant, all of the pods share the same traits. So if one is red they all are. The red color is somewhat influenced by the amount of light that the pods get, so there may be some variation in color from pod to pod. If one pod is tender, then they all are. So if there are 6 pods on a plant, then I only have to taste one of them, but I label all of them.

The offspring being like their parents is more complicated. I expect that if I plant seeds from this year's red-podded peas that about 5% of them next year will be yellow podded. I don't expect any greens or purples, but a few yellows will continue to show up for years.

The snow and sugar-snap traits are due to recessive genes, so once I find those traits, they are retained in the offspring, and I don't expect any off-types for that particular trait.

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applestar
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I'm learning a lot just by lurking :wink:

I'm growing Blauschokker Blue and noticed that mottled green and purple pods were more tender as snowpeas than solid purple ones which were nearly inedible as fast pod peas..... I should trace down the vines and see if the mottled ones are coming off of just one plant.

bunnylove2780
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Hi Joseph, Can you please contact me I would really love to purchase some of the red podded peas you grow. Or I can trade for seeds I have, I have a lot of rare stuff. Please contact me.

Keen101
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Just found this forum. Joseph and I have collaborated on a lot of breeding projects. My favorite has been the watermelon landrace breeding. We collaborate mostly on the Homegrown Goodness Plant Breeding Forum, but I see him on other forums as well. His Landrace breeding is world famous now.

Anyway, I figured you'd all like an update on the project. The sad news is because of family issues Joseph lost all of his seed for the good red podded peas that he had saved. :cry:

The good news is he sent me some of the poor seed that was still segregating around the same time. I continued with it and was saving seed from the best of the best in my garden. I was able to recover a few good red pods at first and then a few more the next year. I eventually ended up with a red snap-ish type. This last season I had just enough seed to send back to Joseph so hopefully he gets a good crop this year. It was nice to be able to send some seed back for a change.

I really loved these segregating peas because I've seen some other peas that were not red but were awesome that I also saved seed for. Such as a yellow snap pea with pink speckles, and a very large podded yellow snow pea that tasted great!

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(you can see a few more photos on my blog: keen101.wordpress.com)

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digitS'
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Hi Keen :D

Thanks for the update.

You are doing good!

digitSteve

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I've grown several different edible podded peas, starting withat very first one, and I think you should consider Cascadia as one to cross with, b'c it tastes great, is very productive and doesn't have real long vines. I grew it just with a bit of support from some branches I collected here and there.

Keen101
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applestar wrote:I love the color of those red pods! What color are the peas/seeds when dry? (I assume they are green when fresh)
Here is a photo of the dry seeds from mine. Notice the "barrel shape" these peas make when they come from a snap-like pod.

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