Sunday 9 November 2014

Sugar Beth F2

What progress?
I'm a bit behind on quite a few things this year. I'd left the young plants, grown from seed a bit too long in their pots. They had become somewhat intertwined with each other and they looked weedy and a bit yellow! But they have been very forgiving and since their late planting out they are putting a lot of effort into correcting my neglect. I now have some flowering Sugar Beth peas!

One of three pink flowering vines.

Purple flowers on one of the vines

I have 12 plants growing from this sowing, 3 are pink flowering and the remainder purple. The purple flowering peas are showing a selection of coloured pods, green, partly purple and I think one is solid purple. Most are mange-tout type pods with 1 being a sugar snap which is part purple

Nearly all purple

Slightly mottled pod of a sugar snap type

Sunlight highlighting the purple and green colours

My aim for this cross was a pink flowering, purple podded mange-tout type pea, although I'd be happy with a sugar snap. But it looks like my aim won't be achieved. The 3 pink-salmon flowering peas have resulted in 1 green podded type and two coloured, but that's where it goes a little skew. The pods initially look like they are purple but as they grow they appear more reddy in colour, I think perhaps the pink flowering gene affects the tone of pod colour as well as the flower and leaf axil splodges. Although it might be a trait from the pollen parent. Anyway it is very attractive, though not as intense a red colour as the pictures I have seen of a 'red podded pea'. It is very pretty none the less, especially when sunlight catches behind the pod, then I think they look amazing!

Two of the pink flowering F2's have pinky - red colour on the pods

Pretty and unusual pod colour

A  purple flowered with green pod and a
pink flowered with 'pink' pod side by side.


8 comments:

  1. Hi Jay,

    Have you seen Rebsie's Blog? She made a similar discovery by crossing a purple podded pea with a yellow podded one:

    http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.nl/2010/04/red-podded-pea-update-f3-crop.html

    I know US plant breeder Alan Kapuler was going to work on this further, to develop a red podded mangtout, but I don't know where he is in the project.

    By the way, your blog is great. Good luck with it.

    Patrick

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    1. Thank you Patrick, Rebsie does have a lovely log, I'm only sorry there are no recent posts.

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  2. Hi Jay,

    Pretty peas! Joseph Lofthouse in the US has made excellent progress on a beautiful red:

    http://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/1772/red-podded-pea-project

    PhilaGardener

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    1. Many thanks, I'll catch up with the progress.

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  3. Hi Jay! I'm very interested in this cross. Would you be willing to share a few seeds from your Sugar Beth cross?

    thanks, -Andrew

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  4. Yes, although I'm not sure where I am with seeds at the moment. I've had a very late start sowing peas this year and I'm hoping they have time to grow. If all works out I should have some F5 seeds in the Autumn. If you are interested there's some more about them here http://www.growingfoodsavingseeds.co.uk/forum/main-forum/peas also a few other threads with red podded peas.

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  5. The bean in the second from last picture is stunning.

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    1. Cheers, I'm hoping to sow some more this year and see what colours appear.

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