Topic: Peas

[Robert_Brenchley]

I just picked the first few. Serpette Guillotteau is a round-seeded pea, about five feet high, currently covered in pods. It's not particularly sweet, but is prolific, and the peas are a decent size.

Bijou lives up to its title of 'Giant Sugar Pea' with tender pods around five inches long. Again it's a tall pea, and reasonably prolific.

Kent Blue is one I like more as a raw pea; its pods are the normal size, and very sweet. None of the peas are full-size yet, but the pods are good when they're at the half-grown stage. This one is about four feet high.

Carruther's Purple Podded is worth noting. There have been a lot of complaints on the site about purple-podded peas not being sweet. This one is. Another nice tall pea.

Anyone else growing interesting varieties?

[landimad]

Sorry Robert,
Only stuck to the basic Kelvedon Wonder and boy has it done well for us this year. So many peas and to few meals to eat them. We have even taken them to school/work for nibbles. ;D

[manicscousers]

our colossus are doing well, lots of pods and nice tasty peas, apart from them, the mummy peas are only just starting, telephono are great but 'ordinary', the smaller ones are lidl peas but lots of pods  ;D

[valmarg]

We are growing two petit pois varieties. Waverex and Colibra.  They do seem to be a bit mixed up together, but I picked my first pod today (Waverex) and the peas were lovely and sweet.

Don't tend to bother with the larger pea varieties as they tend to lose their sweetness.

Plants about 4' high, covered in flowers and pods.  Hope we get a 'bit' of rain tonight to swell them up.

valmarg

[1066]

interetsing thread Robert. I'm trying, ok it was an impulse buy, Blauwschokker Peas - purple podded. A profusion of flowers and now have lots of pods - but from what I understand it's more of a marrowfat pea, but other sites suggest it's ok for eating (and not drying). Time will tell!! In fact looking at my standard peas, this is outstripping them by far!

1066  :)

[goodlife]

My Early Alaskan, Golden Sweet and Half Pint are now finished cropping, last ones are dried and soon all shelled for seeds....
I've got some Alderman, Telephone, Serpette, Carouby and Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow just flowering...and first ones just getting ready for a little nibble..oh and good old Sugar Snaps too.. ;D
I've just ordered some Vada and Dorian..which I'm going to try for late sowing...so as soon as they come I'm going to sow some..and maybe another lot of Half Pint too... ;D

[macmac]

We have grown Bijou for the first time this year,I grumbled that it was a lot of plant for little crop however it's now cropping loads of huge pods so will definately grow it again .
Sorry Robert we're very boring with other peas for earlies it'e Feltham First and then we grow Greenshaft.

[galina]

Bijou lives up to its title of 'Giant Sugar Pea' with tender pods around five inches long. Again it's a tall pea, and reasonably prolific.

All the giant podded pea varieties I know have a maximum of 8 peas per pod, can you tell how many Bijou has?  If not, please don't pod any on my behalf, the answer can wait until you do pod them.

Just curious about the relationship between peas in pod and pod length. 

[Tin Shed]

Lancashire Lad is looking superb with its lovely purple pods which are just beginning to swell.
Victorian podded is also covered in purple pods, but is a week or so behind.
I am also growing Latvian which I read is used mainly for dried peas so I let them dry off and and see how they do.
Was also planning to sow Salmon flowered peas from seed saved from last year, but someone nicked them, as well as some other saved seeds, from my greenhouse >:( I am planning to take a wander around the allotment to see if they have appeared on another plot this year.
Apart from the previous heritage ones, I am growing Misty which always seem to produce a good crop.

[chriscross1966]

The Meteors are just about finished.... lovely raw when the pea is about half gfrown, but a bit bland when full sized.... Telephone are flowering now and some have pods showing, so should be soon....Dunno if I'll bother with Meteor again... yes they were quick to crop but I'd need to grow tons of the l;ittle sods to get enough to pick young enoiugh to be nice.....

chrisc

[schw]

Bijou lives up to its title of 'Giant Sugar Pea' with tender pods around five inches long. Again it's a tall pea, and reasonably prolific.

All the giant podded pea varieties I know have a maximum of 8 peas per pod, can you tell how many Bijou has?  If not, please don't pod any on my behalf, the answer can wait until you do pod them.

Just curious about the relationship between peas in pod and pod length. 

I'm pretty sure I had some pods with 9 peas earlier in the season, although 8 seems to be the most common. Has 8 been an absolute maximum in your experience? If I find another with 9 I shall take a photo. It's easy to count the seeds without opening the pods, as they are very lumpy, being completely without fibre, and easy to see through. I think Bijou has one or both of the genes lt and lat, which increases pod width, or leaf and pod size, respectively (according to the Pisum Gene List). I don't think they would have any bearing on the number of seeds.

It has done marvellously for me this year, 8ft tall, nice flowers and masses of enormous, tasty pods despite the complete lack of rain. I even left some to mature a bit, and cooked the swelled peas and the pods separately. I don't grow any beans and they made a great stand-in! The first sowing did take a while to get going - it was six foot before it threw any buds - but the later sowing has been much quicker.

[aj]

Lancs Lad; been picking for 3 weeks now and still doing so.

A random in the Lancs Lad pack; ditto, still coming strong.

Mummy's Pea for HSL; sown late and just beginning to form pods now.

Golden Sweet mange tout - been picking lovely golden pods for 2 weeks.

Eat All Mange Tout - ditto - nice big long pods; what a great find this packet was :D

Kelvedon Wonder - rubbish this year!

[Robert_Brenchley]

All the giant podded pea varieties I know have a maximum of 8 peas per pod, can you tell how many Bijou has?  If not, please don't pod any on my behalf, the answer can wait until you do pod them.

Just curious about the relationship between peas in pod and pod length. 

8. I froze a few yesterday so it was easy to check. My mummy peas are just starting to flower, but they haven't done well. A lot of the peas I grew through the remains of the overwintering onions, and didn't mulch, have suffered in the drought. I'll get some pods off them though, as long as I keep the pigeons off!

[Jayb]

Goldensweet and Winterkefe have been great I’ve left some for seed which are hanging up to dry. I’m just about coming to the end of Caroby de  Maussane, super large pods yum, I’m hoping (your seeds) Bijou will be taking over from them in about a week, I did sample one earlier, very nice.  So far the plants are very similar to C.de M, although Bijou has not finshed growing yet. Galina, I've not counted more than eight seeds in either.

My favourite pea so far this year has been Alderman, super all round. But a few more to try yet ;D

Doug Bray of Grimsby for HSL is flowering and pods are just starting to form.

[campanula]

oh boring choices for me as I always struggle with peas anyway - but MUST have them. Greenshaft have all been picked and frozen and Show Perfection (these are gorgeous peas) are heavy with pods, will start picking them tomorrow. The lack of rain is making everything suffer so I am going for a scorched earth policy of stripping everything and freezing, bottling or jamming. Just got another 10lbs of blackcurrants in a pan (hours of picking!) for cordial.

[betula]

Had a magic pea moment today,neighbours little girl had to work her way into the pea pod and could not believe there were peas inside........she ate and enjoyed.

Hope in the future she may remember that moment when she has a lottie of her own..........she takes a very keen interest in what is going on on our little plot.

[Fork]

Im getting soooooooooooo many peas at the moment too.Eaten them twice today,a dinner this evening and I had minestrone soup for lunch and threw some extra peas in that too  ;D

[galina]

Thank you Robert and Jayb and sorry for hijacking the topic of this post somewhat.  It just occurred to me yesterday when I was podding a giant pod with 8 seeds and a smaller pod with 10 seeds, that one way of getting the giants even bigger could be to increase their number of seeds by crossing with a 10 seed variety :)

Here the large podded ones ie Schweizer Riesen, Eat All and Court Estate Gold have been early and good.  We ate so many and put some more in the freezer.  Court Estate Gold have been getting bright yellow leaves with the heat and drought.  I have given them a drenching in the hope for a further flush of flowers and pods.  The 3 varieties of capucijn grown this year have also been early and the pods are drying now.  Lancashire Lad was interesting because the pods were free of parchment even at a large size, but before they swelled up.  This variety can almost be used as a mangetout, tasty too.  Weggiser as usual seems to shrug off heat very well.  I am not eating any this year, they are all for seed.  Golden Sweet is slowing down now, we picked a lot for eating but also left some early and some later pods for seed.  Sugar Bon, Wando and Rheinischer Zucker are for seeds only.  Laxton's Exquisite and some other shorter vined varieties have been raided by mice and not yielded many pods for eating or seedsaving.  Amish Snap has provided us with loads of sweet snap pods.  Much better than Sugar Bon.  Magnum Bonum and Alderman are loaded with pods as is Ne Plus Ultra and we are about to start harvesting these.  Looking forward to shelled peas, rather than mangetouts and snaps.

Betula, thanks for sharing the story and for letting the little girls snack on your peas in the first place.  AHH

[Mortality]

My basic normal pea variety was Onward, a lovely sweet, thick podded, prolific pea that grew to about 4ft, it escaped alot of the pea moth damage.  ;D

The golden sweet grew really well and fast to roughly 5ft, the mangetout pods lived up to their name and were lovely and sweet. I left alot to go on to peas, they tasted bland but would be fine in a soup, interestingly the pods from the full grown peas were still edible and still sweet, this thin podded pea suffered alot from the pea moths.

The purple podded pea - Desiree, slow growing, thick podded, short plants to roughly 3ft, peas tasted fine not as sweet as the Onward but not as bland as the Golden Sweet. Most of these are still to be harvested as the pods are slow in fattening up.

I didn't cross breed any of the peas, however I have noticed that the purple podded plants that remain, one of them has a mottled purple and green pod and then further down the stalk there are two totally green pods, further back the plant has the normal purple pods.

Does that mean this purple podded isn't totally stable or ..?

[Jayb]

Galina, if you have a few spare seeds available for swaps later on I'd be very interested in some of the peas you have listed  :)
Interesting pea to pod size. Another thought and although less peas in the pod, what could be a likely outcome of a cross with a large pea size pea such as hugh's huge or Irish Preans?