Seed Saving Circle 2024

[juliev]

Thanks Galina, I was wondering if they would be worth harvesting as whole leeks. Using them as leek greens make a lot more sense!

While we are discussing alliums, could I ask about Welsh onions/allium fistulosum?
I am assuming they are grown as perennials. How do you prevent different forms from crossing if you want to save seeds? Do you simply remove flower shoots (it seems too simple... am I missing something?)?

[juliev]

[juliev]

I'm about to sow my peas. They are a few varieties that I am not sure I have categorised correctly. (and I trust you more than seed catalogues  )

Sankia (seed circle, shared 2024) shelling pea?
Crown Pea Salmon flowered and Rosa Krone. I grew Rosa Krone last year as a shelling pea, but I'd be tempted to grow it as a dry/soup pea
Opal Creek, yellow sugar snap? It didn't look/have the texture of the other sugar snaps I grew last year
Shiraz, purple mangetout. We've tried several time, we find it awful...
Blawschoker, purple mangetout. In the catalogue description, it's often said "if eaten very young"...

[galina]

I have removed Minogue flower heads when I wanted to grow pure leek seeds.  With the multiplier onions it isn't so critical as they are more variable anyway. 

Welsh onions, I only have the one variety, so that is easy.  In a previous post I was talking about the Welsh leek, growing wild in coastal areas, which is a perennial.  And that is a less winter hardy leek than the Telsing Andrews multiplier leek, St Victoir x Oerprei, so not good for here unfortunately. But we shared seeds in the circle some years ago and I got my first start from goodlife, one of our very active seedsavers in the early years.

[JanG]

Just researching how to get the tree peony started.  Is it really as lengthy and difficult as this?  Very mindful that after the more than six months to germination, there will be little time left to grow them before winter.  Are these instructions valid (from Google AI).  Should I start much later in the year, to give the seedlings a better growing chance next year? 

Hope somebody can give us the correct advice. 

To grow tree peonies from seed, you can start the seeds in a warm place, then move them to a cooler location. After the seedlings have developed roots, you can pot them up and grow them on.
Steps
Put seeds in a bag with slightly damp vermiculite or compost
Place the bag in a warm place (around 70°F) for 3 months
Move the bag to a cooler location (around 40°F) for 10–12 weeks
When shoots appear, remove the seeds from the bag and pot them up
Grow the seedlings on in a cool place
Gradually move the seedlings outside
Plant the seedlings in well-drained soil in a sunny or semi-shaded location

Thanks

A delayed response to this as I missed it until now. I've grown tree peonies a couple of times from seed several years ago so my memory is a little vague. But in general, the AI instructions are designed to mimic the alternate warm and cold conditions of the passing seasons.

The easy approach is simply to sow them in a pot of well draining compost, leave them outside in a sheltered place where you can just keep an eye on them very occasionally and not be in a hurry. If you sow them in the next month or so they will get the warm temperatures through the summer followed by the cold of winter.

From memory they are pretty good at looking after themselves and will germinate at some point. Don't expect an established tree peony for a good three or four years though. But drama and beauty to come when it/they get there!

[JanG]

Thanks Galina, I was wondering if they would be worth harvesting as whole leeks. Using them as leek greens make a lot more sense!

While we are discussing alliums, could I ask about Welsh onions/allium fistulosum?
I am assuming they are grown as perennials. How do you prevent different forms from crossing if you want to save seeds? Do you simply remove flower shoots (it seems too simple... am I missing something?)?

I have two stands of Welsh onions which are very robust and survive in the midst of neglect. One stand has red stems and one white. Interestingly they flower at different times from each other so don't cross. If you have different forms which flower at the same time then simply removing the flower stems from one and collecting seeds from the other should work fine.

As you say, they are Allium fistulosum and won't cross with either leeks (Allium ampeloprasum) or standard bulbing onions (Allium cepa)

[juliev]

Thank you both. I have sown the seeds shared by Vetivert and I'm looking forward to adding a red Welsh onion to the garden.

[Vetivert]

I'm about to sow my peas. They are a few varieties that I am not sure I have categorised correctly. (and I trust you more than seed catalogues  )

Sankia (seed circle, shared 2024) shelling pea?
Crown Pea Salmon flowered and Rosa Krone. I grew Rosa Krone last year as a shelling pea, but I'd be tempted to grow it as a dry/soup pea
Opal Creek, yellow sugar snap? It didn't look/have the texture of the other sugar snaps I grew last year
Shiraz, purple mangetout. We've tried several time, we find it awful...
Blawschoker, purple mangetout. In the catalogue description, it's often said "if eaten very young"...

Unfortunately I have to concur with your opinion on Shiraz. I was actually quite astounded when I first tasted it.

Blauwschokker is a wrinkled drying pea. Fully fibrous pods, not a mangetout, but like most varieties could be eaten as such if very young. According to some old Dutch national variety lists from the 1940-50s,'Schokkererwt' was/is the regional terminology for marrowfat (i.e. large wrinkled) peas, like Alderman, Pilot, etc.

Opal Creek is described as a snap. It might be less 'thick-walled' than other types.

Rosakrone is definitely more in the dry/soup pea category rather than fresh shelling.

And Sankia, from what I can gather, is a semi-wild type that was collected for its resistance to powdery mildew. No idea if it has been selected for culinary use. Round seeded so perhaps best as a soup pea?

[galina]

I have removed Minogue flower heads when I wanted to grow pure leek seeds.  With the multiplier onions it isn't so critical as they are more variable anyway. 

Oops, should have said with the multiplier l e e k s  it isn't so critical.

[galina]

Yes I agree Jan, Blauwschokker is definitely for shelling.  Opal Creek is a snap, but a relatively slender one. One of its real advantages is how tolerant it is of summer heat.                             

[galina]

Thank you Vetivert, makes perfect sense.  Guess a pot is the best way and start when the weather is warming up.  Guess patience is definitely required here.  Lovely fat looking seeds.  Looking forward to growing tree peony.

[JanG]

I'm about to sow my peas. They are a few varieties that I am not sure I have categorised correctly. (and I trust you more than seed catalogues  )

Sankia (seed circle, shared 2024) shelling pea?
Crown Pea Salmon flowered and Rosa Krone. I grew Rosa Krone last year as a shelling pea, but I'd be tempted to grow it as a dry/soup pea.

Opal Creek, yellow sugar snap? It didn't look/have the texture of the other sugar snaps I grew last year
Shiraz, purple mangetout. We've tried several time, we find it awful...
Blawschoker, purple mangetout. In the catalogue description, it's often said "if eaten very young"...

This is a good moment to remind you of the Airtable base where these should be categorised. I shall also add any extra observations from Vetivert's reply.

I had some problems with the base as I inadvertently started to gather a lot of charges. With some good advice from my son, I found a way round that and moved it around. It is now fully available again but I think the ability to sort, filter, group etc might have got lost for a few people for a while. I shall make sure this morning that those facilities are available again.

So, on the base, I have Sankia as a soup pea.

Blauwschokker is on the base too and described much as Vetivert confirmed above. It was contributed by Silverleaf in 2021.

I don't know whether anyone also has had trouble with germinating Salmon-flowered Crown pea. It didn't germinate for me. I'm not sure what went wrong. ☹️

[juliev]

Thank you all, peas ready to go! (Looks like I've got some pea breeding on the horizon...)

Jan, I've just tried it and the airtable is working for me. Thank you!

[galina]

No, Opal Creek is a real snap pea.  However, it does have the narrowing of the pod, the reduced pod width, that (most of the time), comes with the colour yellow.  Which is why I was so lucky to get a wide yellow mangetout with Court Estate Gold.  As it was my first ever breeding effort, I didn't even appreciate how lucky that was.  More recently bred yellow snaps here have longer length than Opal Creek, but not the width of say Magnolia Blossom, despite being bred from Court Estate Gold as the yellow parent.     

[galina]

The grouping of soup pea, as opposed to shelling pea may be less useful than a separate group of the white flowered, marrowfat, shelling type pea, which are the sweeter peas, separate from the field pea types.  Marrowfat, aka sweet English peas, are used as fresh shelling peas and as drying peas (reconstituted as mushy peas with fish and chips).  I am talking about varieties like Hurst Green Shaft, Kelvedon Wonder or Telephone when I am talking about marrowfat or English peas.
 
Soup peas, like the Latvian Soup pea, are fine as freshly shelled peas, mature earlier and are welcome freshly shelled because of that, but they do not have the same sweetness that the traditional 'Captain's' pea varieties have.  Soup peas maybe a term in use, because their smaller seed size means they reconstitute faster than the larger seeded peas or just because they were traditionally used that way.   

So, within shelling peas (because none have an edible pod unless picked very young), it is just the different level of inherent sweetness.  With the mutation to white flowers centuries ago, came a level of sweetness, that the older types of field peas often called grey peas (because of their often mottled seed colour) do not have.  I think this is the real difference, not so much their use.  You can eat all drying and soup peas freshly shelled too and you can equally dry all 'fresh eating' peas for mushy pea type dishes.   

 

[juliev]

Thank you Galina for taking the time to give further details. I have to admit my ignorance when it comes to pea groupings (and many more crops, I'm sure!). Beyond the petit pois, everything has been a new culinary experience... Now I'll know what I'm eating when I have mushy peas!

Add serious taste testing to the list of summer jobs...

[galina]

Juliev, yes, the problem is (just like with beans), that there are too many different names around, describing the same or different things, and it gets very confusing, very fast. Indeed, enjoy them all and happy growing and taste testing. 

[JanG]

The grouping of soup pea, as opposed to shelling pea may be less useful than a separate group of the white flowered, marrowfat, shelling type pea, which are the sweeter peas, separate from the field pea types.  Marrowfat, aka sweet English peas, are used as fresh shelling peas and as drying peas (reconstituted as mushy peas with fish and chips).  I am talking about varieties like Hurst Green Shaft, Kelvedon Wonder or Telephone when I am talking about marrowfat or English peas.
 
Soup peas, like the Latvian Soup pea, are fine as freshly shelled peas, mature earlier and are welcome freshly shelled because of that, but they do not have the same sweetness that the traditional 'Captain's' pea varieties have.  Soup peas maybe a term in use, because their smaller seed size means they reconstitute faster than the larger seeded peas or just because they were traditionally used that way.   

So, within shelling peas (because none have an edible pod unless picked very young), it is just the different level of inherent sweetness.  With the mutation to white flowers centuries ago, came a level of sweetness, that the older types of field peas often called grey peas (because of their often mottled seed colour) do not have.  I think this is the real difference, not so much their use.  You can eat all drying and soup peas freshly shelled too and you can equally dry all 'fresh eating' peas for mushy pea type dishes.   

 

That's really interesting. I had always taken 'marrowfat' to denote a pastier kind of pea than the sweet shelling pea. Some sources suggest that the term is used for larger peas which are traditionally left to dry rather than eaten fresh though as you say, Galina, they can certainly be eaten fresh. I'm wondering where bean peas, such as Mr Bound's bean pea and Bullroyd bean pea fit in.

I also hadn't thought of soup peas as necessarily small but, thinking about it now, the peas which carry that name do tend to be small. In my mind, I guess I was thinking of all non-sweet peas as good for drying and therefore for soup, stews etc..

The categorisation certainly is confusing but your clarification, once I've rethought some of my labelling, is very helpful. It leaves me thinking that I must develop a taste for non-sweet fresh podded peas. I'll join the taste testing!

[galina]

Jan, Mr Bound's Bean Pea would be one of the old 'grey' or shelling/drying peas, developed for its large size, so less work makes a good dish of peas.

Talking about uses, the white flowered sweet fresh eating, shelling peas, especially in their most luxurious form as small immature petit pois, was initially associated with the aristocracy and with fine dining.  The grey peas aka field peas were more associated with dry uses, ordinary people and winter survival.  In that category, a really large pea must be welcome.  But it does take longer to reconstitute than a smaller soup pea.  No doubt they weren't just dried, but also eaten as fresh peas in season, but their principal value was that they could be stored for the winter months.

English pea breeders, in particular Knight, Carter, Laxton etc all worked on developing the sweet, white flowered, fresh eating pea further, making it available to everybody.  These are still the most popular peas today.

Second most popular today are probably the mangetout peas, especially associated with Chinese dishes and stir fries.  The sugar snap peas have gained importance in very recent years (breeder Calvin Lambourne, although they were known to the Amish community already).  Whereas the soup peas or the grey peas of old are almost forgotten, with little pockets of traditional regional use, where 'parched pea dishes' still play a role.  However, looking at the most recent developments, there is a revival here too, with more interest in ethnic, vegetarian and vegan foods that favours non sweet peas.     

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrew_Knight

Jan you wrote  ", I guess I was thinking of all non-sweet peas as good for drying and therefore for soup, stews etc.."  Pea terms really are not always logical and not universally clear in their meaning.   Bean terms are as confusing.     

[JanG]

Thank you, Galina, for this very illuminating history of pea use and development. It seems, as you initially said, that the only real distinction for the eating of shelling peas is in the degree of sweetness. Historically the terminology is interesting if not always consistent.

I'm looking forward to sampling the varieties I'm growing at different stages, including the dreaded Shiraz.