Court Estate Gold

[Galina]

Having written so much about the breeding with Court Estate Gold, I thought I'd better put up a photo of a CEG in full swing. I bred these from Golden Sweet and Schweizer Riesen (aka Swiss Giant), both favourites. I blame Carol Deppe and her book 'Breed your own vegetable varieties' which really inspired me to do this cross.

The pods are a little longer and quite a bit wider than Golden Sweet, but doubles are rare. The colour is a bit more golden than the yellow of Golden Sweet. The plants from seeds diligently selected from doubles last year are all producing singles this year.

I love the giant mangetouts and was really pleased that I managed a bigger yellow one. Not as huge as Carouby (but we will see how that cross works out, the F1 is growing right now).

I named the pea after its colour and after the local area - Court Estate used to be a royal hunting ground.

[templeton]

how big does it grow, Galina?
And yes, Deppe has a lot to answer for...
T

[Galina]

about 5 ft tall

[Silverleaf]

I'm totally with you about Deppe!

[jayb]

They are a lovely mangetout, one I'll be growing often, taste is better than Golden Sweet too

[Galina]

Thank you Jayb. Templeton, plants are 5-6ft, early pods are 5 inches or sometimes slightly longer, later pods are much shorter.

.

[templeton]

sounds v nice
T

[Galina]

They are doing well this year too.

[jayb]

They are looking stunning, I forget how much bigger than Golden Sweet they are!
Lovely crop

[Galina]

So here is the rest of the breeding story of CEG. The F1 was green. I chose the cross this way round (as recommended by Carol Deppe), so that Golden Sweet was the mother and the pollen came from Schweizer Riesen. Had it not taken, the F1 would have been yellow. Yellow is recessive and green is dominant. In the F1 all the dominant feature come out. And a green F1 was good news.

So I rushed to grow the F2 generation in the same year as the F1. First F1 pod harvested had 6 seeds, these grew into six F2 plants with 6 different new strains of pea. These new strains are of course not yet the finished item, but the first glimpse at what is possible. And the generation that displays the most differences. Exciting. A quarter (mathematically) of 6 should be yellow podded from a yellow and green pea cross. What I actually got is here.




Maybe it is not very clear as this photo was taken with a dodgy early digital camera and the pods were drying at the time, so the colours are very dull compared to what they were when they were on the bush. The photo was an afterthought altogether as it was not possible to show all possibilities in a photo on the plants. #6 was much later than the others and only just full size. I had 2 yellows, how is that for statistic luck! However #4 surprisingly was a shelling pea (as was#6 and #1), the best colour sadly, but not what I wanted. Where do all these short blunt podded types come from? #5 however ticked all the boxes. On this photo the colours have faded considerably but they were the size of Schweizer Riesen (bottom right) and the yellow colour I wanted. (Golden Sweet rather faded is drying bottom left). The rest was rather boring short green mangetouts.



CEG on the left and Golden Sweet on the right.


This was my first ever very lucky pea breeding adventure.

[Galina]

There were only two photos in the last post on this thread. One of the parents and 6 F2 offspring and the other CEG and Yellow Sweet in comparison.

Have stopped counting the generations. About F15. Long a stable variety.

[Jang]

Great to have the full history of CEG clearly laid out. How lovely that your first venture went so smoothly to plan. It’s easy to see why you were hooked after that!
CEG pods look splendidly meaty compared with Golden Sweet which in my recent growing of it seemed rather papery thin.
The first photo doesn’t show - just two empty boxes. It would be good to see the six varieties if It’s not too much trouble to upload it again.

[jayb]

CEG dwarfs Golden Sweet's pod by at least twice if not three times, stunning. You don't have to pick many of those for a portion!

[Galina]

Sorry about that, something must have gone wrong. Will upload again. Hope it works this time Pods 1-6 are at the top. Golden Sweet and Schweizer Riesen, the parents, at the bottom

[jayb]

Great picture, love how you have set them out.