Share growing observations and seed saving for GTS pea mix here and including photographs of your plants and seeds. What challenges do you have while growing peas? What mix catagories would you like to see? What are your favorite garden peas?
The seed above is from a planting in November, the green vines are a second planting from February. The February planting almost didnt make it due to a spike in daytime temps of 103 degrees, the growing tips literally looked they were melting in the heat. Then the weather cooled off to a nice 90 degree day with high 50’s at night…and will stay thay way for another three weeks. Just enough time to get a modest harvest to eat and for seeds.
I don’t have the GTS mix, but I’ve grown peas and saved seed for years, both edible and dry pod/shelling types. Some of my favorite varieties are:
“Swedish Red” prolific dual purpose snap pea and dry soup pea and “Golden Harvest” bush type dry shelling pea from Dan Jason/Salt Spring Seeds.
“Golden Sweet” yellow podded snow pea type from Uprising Seeds.
“Amish Snap” smaller green podded snap pea from Seed Savers Exchange.
I’ve grown them separately and never done any hand crossing, so they’ve stayed true to type, but my region is ideal for peas and they’ve always been quite productive. Regardless, I planted the three edible podded types mixed up together and will be doing some experimental crosses this year to see what comes of it. The Swedish Red variety is insanely prolific here, frequently reaching heights of 12-14 feet if allowed to, and producing heavy loads of pods (my profile picture is me standing at full 6-foot height looking up into these peas last summer)
Nice setup. Glad your harvesting peas to eat and to grow again. Thanks for sharing your favorites and the growth habits. I let the bees do the polinating, natural hybrids are the way to go for me. I like the different colors too. Will you be sending in some of your harvest this year? If so, what should the seed mixes look like? Shelling, sugar snaps and soup peas? Just about any dried pea could be used in a soup? So far, I’m growing the snow peas during winter in my growing zone, and will grow soup peas for the monsoon season.
I’d prefer it if pollinators would help with the crossing, but I’ve been saving multiple varieties of pea seeds for over a decade and never found an obvious cross. I know it can happen, but like domestic tomatoes it’s just so rare without help.
As for different categories/mixes of peas, I’d think it depends somewhat on how much interest there is. Edible pod is definitely worth separating out. Some might want to separate by pod shape, too, but I’m not sure that matters much to me. I could see arguments for shorter vines (I.e. self supporting) vs those which require a large trellis just because it impacts what kind of space and growing infrastructure you need.
I agree that any pea can be used for soup, but some are much better than others, and it might be worth separating. But at the same time, peas naturally outcross at such a low rate it’s quite easy to select out traits you don’t like, which kind of makes splitting out into a wider range of mixes less important.
No idea. My climate is mild enough that pretty much all peas could be fall planted and overwinter, but they also do very well planted in February. They do a little better with the summer heat than my other varieties, but I imagine they might struggle with Utah heat. Could be a fun experiment, though.
Ooh, I love it when peas have those beautiful pink flowers!
If they do a little better with summer heat, I could probably grow them for longer before they died with summer heat, which would mean more tasty pods to eat. That’d be nifty.
From the GTS soup pea mix. Some seem to be doing better than others despite the swinging temps. Things are supposed to mellow out thankfully. A few have germinated 3 weeks later than the rest, which I thought odd. I’m going to be marking the most vigorous for seed saving and the earliest flowering, which I’ll try to make out to be a larger portion of next years seed stock.
Ok, all great points…I’m thinking edible pods could be one mix, and all others a mix. Im just particular to tender and sweet edible pods and the shape definitely doesn’t matter. Its just difficult to tell them apart when young and before they get swelled with peas. Ive only cooked dried peas a handfull of times and didn’t get to distinguish differences in taste or cooked texture. Im happy to try all recipes. Colors in dried peas and in edible pods probably follows that with purple and red color…more antioxidants exist for enhanced nutrition? So a mix of colored pods and peas would be beneficial for each mix as well. Im in Arizona and the only pests I have are birds and rodents, they eat sprouting seedlings and leaf tips voraciously. I grow peas three times during the year and save seeds.
I have two favorite varieties: Oregon Giant snow peas (which make a very good shelling pea if they go past prime snow pea stage), and Velarde soup peas (which aren’t quite as sweet as a true shelling pea, but have nice edible pods when young, sweet enough shelling peas that most get consumed straight off the plant by my small people, and then well-flavored dry peas at the end. There is some diversity in this seed. (Photo - these plants are approaching the end of their season. They’ve also been through 2 weeks that flirted with 90 degrees, and they’re untouched by powdery mildew in spite of some quality warm-damp weeks.). I’ll send in some seeds for next year.
I’m curious about the multicolored soup peas, but I’ll probably stick with these two for a while - at least until we finish the Canyon City Chile.
Nice pea patch. Dual purpose would be wonderful, sweet pods and tasty shelling peas. Glad your saving seeds and sending some in for a GTS mix. I still have to finish shelling the first planting, then wait fir the second to dry, shell those too. Then I’ll send in also for the GTS mix. We love peas they are such a quick season favorite. I have mixed varieties growing, so purple and green, some tan and then almost white dried peas for an edible pod mix. The patch I have now has all white blooms, but the other pea colors throw out pink, purple and buff.
For those with experience growing mixed populations, is it possible to recognize peas that have crossed (or are more likely to have crossed), before growing them out?
Are there recognizable differences in the pods/seeds that show up just from cross-pollination? This is my first year intentionally trying to mix my edible podded varieties and I’m planning to do some hand pollination to jump start things, but it would be preferable to recognize the rare natural crosses as that would favor flowers that are more likely to continue crossing. I’m unlikely to grow out all the resulting seed next year due to space constraints, so it would be difficult to rely only on observable differences in the F1 generation.
It depends on what you start with. Some have distinctive seed color, texture and flower color. There are smooth peas, wrinkled peas, brown peas, purple peas, tan peas, speckled peas and peas with flat sides. The only way I knew I had crosses in the F1 generation is when I shelled the resulting seed. I observed two colors of peas within the same pod. Otherwise you’d need to mark what you plant, and keep track of what you hand pollinate if you decide to utilize the technique. There are white flowers, pink, dark pink, purple and sometimes flowers are larger or really petite. There is also pod differences, green, purple, pale green, yellow, thin pods and fat pods…I chose colors of pea pods and different colors of flowers of a few varieties, then observed as they grew. Nature and the bees polinated for me so the results were really random.
Can you share a photo of your seeds?
Here I have two different grow outs…and it looks like the dark peas didnt show in the second planting…they also could have been selected by my garden and died. When I plant the seeds again this November I’ll pay closer attention to the resulting results of pods and seeds.
The three varieties I’m growing together are all very distinctive and different in combinations of flower color, pod shape, and seed color. I will have no trouble identifying if I’ve grown out a crossed seed in a future generation. Was just curious if there are any observable signs in the first year before/at harvest. (Like how some corn kernels can take on a small amount of off-type color just due to cross-pollination).
I surely grew shelling peas…at least thats what lived. I planted 10 feet of shelling and ten feet of snap/snow peas below the trellis. The ground squirrel ate all of the snap pea plants except two. It didnt care fir the shelling peas. I can see now by how the pods are forming, short and filling with peas. And all white blooms, even though there are several varieties.
Yup, its the time of planting too. The rodents didnt touch the early plantings in November and December. But…its still a dry YEAR and there isnt any new vegetative growth in the desert. Usually there are wildflowers and forbs…nothing this spring.
Yes, thats what I did…ive had three plantings of peas…this last planting thats inside the greenhouse has had the most destruction. The first two planting grew inside my back yard, protected by a block wall…and still had rodent pressure. My property is an island between two rodent towns on 5 acres each. Thousands of rodents…there are holes and rodent towns every 10 feet. The property was historically a jojoba farm, and its surrounded by citrus and date palms.
