meshmouse
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Re: Red-podded peas

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

octupus
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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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