Topic: First pea flowers!

[Silverleaf]

Well I've been impatiently watching for flowers, scalpel in hand expectantly, and I'm now the proud owner of two Sugar Ann flowers. :) 

Nothing to cross them with yet (Golden Sweet and Purple Podded look hopeful though), but I'm excited because this indicates the start of my pea breeding career.

My first every cross will likely be Golden Sweet x Sugar Ann. I can't wait!

[Silverleaf]

A Sugar Ann flower this morning. The plants suffered from slugs when they were pretty small but they've recovered and don't seem much affected now.



The second pea to flower is one of my experimental lines from the USDA. It's called W6 15097 which isn't very catchy, so I've nicknamed it after a character in my favourite board game, Absolute Zero.



Interesting to see the difference in foliage colour to Sugar Ann, it's a much more intense green. I chose this particular line for several reasons - it has the gene for dark/bluish-green pods (dp) and a couple of other things I'm interested in and the flower is an interesting muddy colour. Doesn't it look weird? Almost brown. Apparently if I can combine the dark pod gene with the yellow pod gene such as the one in Golden Sweet, it'll make a darker yellow. That could be fun.

Golden Sweet and Purple Podded now have tiny flower buds, and a couple of my other experimental lines are close to flowering too. 

[Silverleaf]

Bah. A slimy git ate the Absolute Zero flower last night! I'm annoyed because I went to bed early and therefore didn't do my intended slug patrol. On the plus side though, the tiny pod seems to be perfectly intact and it was definitely well beyond the self-pollination stage. Hopefully the pod will escape further mollusc attention. There are more flowers coming, but I only have three plants so every potential seed I can get from it is precious.

And speaking of pollination, guess who did her first cross this morning?

Probably too humid a day really, but I couldn't resist when I found a Golden Sweet bud that looked only slightly too small. I'll add more pollen to the same flower tomorrow morning to be on the safe side. The pollen came from Sugar Ann, and the cross is intended to produce a yellow snap pea.

The physical process of crossing wasn't as difficult as I expected. It took two attempts to find a male with a decent amount of pollen, but emasculating the female wasn't bad at all. Why haven't I attempted this before?

[willsy]

Would love to see what you get next year from your saved seed. Good luck.

[Silverleaf]

Would love to see what you get next year from your saved seed. Good luck.

Thanks! I'll be sure to bore everyone to death with continuous updates... ;)

I think my next cross will be Absolute Zero x Golden Sweet. My aim here is to produce a darker yellow pod colour, since AZ has the dp gene that I need to do that.

I'm waiting impatiently for Purple Podded to hurry up so I can cross that with Golden Sweet too, to hopefully get the much-coveted red pods.

[Silverleaf]

Absolute Zero x Golden Sweet cross done this afternoon. I was going to repollinate the first bud today but none of the Sugar Ann flowers were at the right stage for pollen, unfortunately. Oh well, I'm planning to do several of each cross anyway.

I think I can do Golden Sweet x Purple Podded tomorrow morning, the flowers look right. This is exciting!

[galina]

Absolute Zero x Golden Sweet cross done this afternoon. I was going to repollinate the first bud today but none of the Sugar Ann flowers were at the right stage for pollen, unfortunately. Oh well, I'm planning to do several of each cross anyway.

I think I can do Golden Sweet x Purple Podded tomorrow morning, the flowers look right. This is exciting!

Very exciting.  The flowers are still a good size to work with.  Almost no need for tweezers.  Now is  the time to make crosses.

Just wondering about the right way to describe a cross.  Golden Sweet x Purple Podded for example.  Is that Golden Sweet as the mother and receiving Purple Podded pollen? I guess that is the way round to do it because if the F1 turns out yellow, then the cross has not worked, sort of an additional check.  Is 'mother x father' the convention for describing a cross? 

Good luck for your crosses.

[Silverleaf]

Honestly, I don't remember which way round it should be. I'm listing the male first because I'm used to listing it that way when I do family history research, but I could well be wrong.

I did two Golden Sweet x Purple Podded early this morning.

I used Purple Podded as the mother simply because there were two flowers at the right stage to be the female, and Golden Sweet only had buds either too young or too old (but good for pollen). Like you say, using GS as the mother would let you see fairly easily if it had selfed, since the offspring would also have yellowish young shoots, but I know that the flowers I pollinated weren't producing pollen yet and I thoroughly removed the immature anthers. If my hand pollination hasn't taken, there won't be any pollination at all unless something very weird happens!

I've labelled the flower stems with scraps of colour-coded yarn, and I'm going to label the pods themselves with a marker pen once they get full size.

[Silverleaf]

My peas went in late so they're probably behind everyone else's! I don't have many flowers yet, but I do have a few more crosses planned...

[Silverleaf]

Some photos, just because peas are pretty!


Golden Sweet. I like the contrast between the purple petal and yellow calyx.


Absolute Zero, showing that dark "muddy" colour. I think it's pretty.


Absolute Zero pod, the one from the flower that got eaten. You can see even at this early stage, it's quite dark. The pods should be dark blue-green.

[chriscross1966]

I grew all my peas in big pots this year... sstarted out in bedding strip modules in the greenhouse... been harvesting Ruthless for about a week and a half and the second flush (a mixture of Jumbo, Oasis, Hurst Green Shaft adn Alderman) has just started.... there's a small trough of Ne Plus Ultra still climbing though.... will definitely do it like this again, I love peas....

[Silverleaf]

Yep, peas are brilliant! All of my plants for seed saving and crossing are in big pots and they are doing fine apart from some mollusc damage. They look better than the ones I'll be eating which are in the raised bed, but that's to be expected as I deliberately selected the best of the little plants for seed saving.

News from today: two Purple Podded x Golden Sweet, and a Sugar Ann x Golden Sweet.

And when I got home tonight Elisabeth had open flowers! Very pretty ones too, white and pink. More photos tomorrow, and I'll do a couple of Elisabeth crosses too just for the fun of it.

[GrannieAnnie]

One of the great pleasures of gardening: Experiments
We like sharing in your enthusiasm.

[Silverleaf]

Two Purple Podded x Elisabeth crosses, and another Golden Sweet x Purple Podded.

I was a little worried about my first cross 5 days ago, but there's a tiny yellow pod with minuscule peas in it which makes me very very happy. Success! Some photos later, once I get them uploaded.

[Silverleaf]

It is wonderful seeing pods forming from crosses you made! No crossing today as it's raining, but here are a few pea flower pics from Friday.


Elisabeth, looking very pretty. It's a lovely contrast with the purple flowers next to it.


Golden Sweet flowers never open more than this. I'm seeing a couple of cute little lemon yellow pods now, which is really nice.


Purple Podded is also pretty. I particularly like the deep royal purple of the wings of older flowers, it's beautiful.


Absolute Zero's doing well, some pods are quite big now and there are quite a few more flowers. They are so dark compared to Purple Podded.

Experimental peas Tachyon and Tempest have buds now, and a couple of others are not far behind. Tachyon has very interesting foliage mutations which I will show you soon - it has a million tiny leaves and no tendrils, with only the stipules looking normal. The flower is pink, apparently.

[galina]

is Tachyon like Parsley Pea?  Modified tendrils.

[galina]

is Tachyon like Parsley Pea?  Modified tendrils?

https://sites.google.com/site/seedsharingcircle/seed-parcel/seed-parcel-2012

(about 2/3rds down the page)

[Silverleaf]

Yes, it looks like the same set of mutations. Very weird next to my "ordinary" pea plants!

[Silverleaf]

Leaves of one of the Tachyon plants.

I have three plants, all different. One of them has fewer bigger leaves, the other two have millions of tiny leaves like the picture. Out of the two tiny-leaved ones, one so far has no anthocyanin and the other has definite pink showing.

Interesting how a couple of genes can make a pea plant look like it's not even a pea!

[galina]

Tachyon looks stunning!  what genes are involved in foliage/tendril modifications?

Beautiful variety.