Elisabeth Mangetout Pea

I was gifted Elisabeth by a good gardening friend, Galina and what a delight they have been. They grow beautifully, taste great and look stunning! 

"Elisabeth is a mangetout pea from Switzerland which Elisabeth (my mother) bought. She shared her packet with me. One of the pea flower pairs on my plants had mutated to pink and white. The others were all purple. I marked the pink pair of flowers and grew the seeds separately. The plants are just like the original variety in every respect, with the exception of flower colour, which has remained pink. They are not fasciated like Salmon Flowered. The pods are up to 2 inches long, shorter later in the season and very prolific. Plants are around the 5ft mark, a bit taller this year with all the rain in spring and early summer." Galina

Since receiving them I've been growing these lovely mangetout each year,

Pink Axil

Seeds and dried pods, which are fibreless

I've used these peas in several crosses which I'm in the process of growing out. The cotton tag in the picture shows me this flower has been cross pollinated by another variety. Sugar Beth has Elisabeth as a parent.

Heritage Seed Library Picks 2016

I'm not sure what happened this year, I usually look forward to receiving the seed catalogue from the Heritage Seed Library (HSL) in December. But this winter has been quite a struggle and I just wasn't feeling very well, so all thoughts of planning what to choose was put to one side. That is until I received an email reminding that the deadline for orders was February 26th, which was just a couple of days away. With a cuppa I sat down and went through the list picking out varieties that took my fancy the most. I selected 6 varieties and sent of my request. I wasn't sure if I'd get back any of my first choices at such a late date, usually I put in the request straight away. 

My little parcel arrived a few days later, a really quick response by the HSL team. Four varieties were first choice and two second choice.

Bossingham Longpod broad bean (my 2nd choice, first was Relon)

Tower Hamlets dudi (my 2nd choice, first was Slovenian)

Waley's Pea Bean a climbing French bean.

Hutton Wonder pea

Coopers Bean - a pea. I got this variety in 2014 to try but I've no idea what I did with the packet!

Long Blood Red beetroot, I wet for the name as I've grown Early Blood Turnip and love it.
I also had a bonus packet of Tellus celeriac.

Colourful Broad bean flowers

This year I'm noticing some lovely and unusually coloured broad bean flowers, a really nice mix of pinks, purples, reds and browns.

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.

Hello Blog

I've been posting on Growing Food Saving Seeds forum GFSS for a little while and have been wanting to start a blog to run alongside, but there seems to be a blog gremlin on the site so thought I'd start one here instead!

What is it about? A love of gardening and in this case edibles. A pleasure in growing healthy food that looks good and tastes great! 

The blog will be mostly my thoughts and experiences on growing heritage and open pollinated varieties to suit my tastes and growing conditions. With some crops I'm starting to lean towards growing a grex or developing a landrace. For other crops or varieties it might be a home produced hybrid is best. I guess it is also a bit of a dabble into breeding and developing new varieties to grow and a lot learning. My small redress to the big seed boys, who are only interested in ticking certain boxes and seem hell bent on interfering with nature. 

I'll transfer some blog posts from Mostly Tomato Mania http://mostlytomatomania.blogspot.co.uk/  because I think they are more relevant here.

Pink-Red podded peas!

I was surprised to find these colour pods in my pea patch!

They are not a purple and not quite red, somewhere in-between. When lit with sunlight from behind they look very similar to a red podded pea - well a Mange-tout really!

Here it looks more like a Red Podded Pea

And here a part coloured Pink Red Podded Pea

More Pink Flowered Peas

I'm very happy, I have some pretty pale pink flowers from one of the crosses (a back cross really) I made last year. It was a bit of an experiment to see what happened to the F1 flower colour when both parents having the pink flower gene are crossed, that's assuming it is the same pink gene as two different pink lines are being used. Usually a cross with a pink flowered pea gives a purple/magenta flowered F1 plant, regardless if the other parent used in the cross is white or purple/magenta flowering.

Purple/magenta pea flower

I crossed Salmon Flowered Crown to Elisabeth x Sugar Magnolia (F1) which at only the first generation meant it would have genes bouncing around and the subsequent F1 seed I saved, would be unlikely to be uniform in type as most F1's to stable parents are. I have 3 F1 plants growing and they have just started flowering.  2 pink and 1 purple flowered!

Plant 1, pink flower 

Plant 1, pink flower 

Plant 2, pink flower 

Plant 2, pink flower 

Plant 3, purple flower 

Plant 3 purple leaf splodge!