Been wildly el Nino here - 35C in October, and drought on the way. With the thought of doing some additional crosses to include some new characteristics into my yellow and purple mangetout projects, I did a planting of some snows - Roi de Carouby, and Swiss Giant, (big pods), hypertendril field peas Kaspa and Gunyah - (pink flowers, hyper), dwarf green peas Tender Tendrils and Novella (dwarf, hyper) and my purple snow, Heather. Roi has been a bit poor in past seasons, so I was surprised t return home after two weeks away and found huge pods on Roi, decent big ones on Swiss, and lots of flowers on the field peas. I wanted to cross Roi to my Heather to increase pod size in Heather, but examining the flowers, everything was finished - seems Roi is a cool climate pea. Even my hurried covering of the whole vege garden in 70% shadecloth (in October!) before leaving for my work trip didn't see to help - well at least they didn't die.
While waiting for these to mature, I found some hypertendril yellow snows in another growout, so the appeal of crossing, then growing out for several years the hypertendril dwarfs to coloured snows is less than appealing, so I don't think I'll be doing the crosses. Ditto pink flowers. Easier to pick from the segregates of the yellow hypers, and perhaps play with flower colour in future years.
On a disappointing note, A 6 plant growout of what I thought was my purple mangetout Heather has turned out to be fiberous - damn - lovely big pods, lots of purple, and now fibre - dunno how it happened, - mislabelled packet? dodgy collection, mixed bags? hangover when i did the fibre assessment a few seasons ago? Doubling disappointing - I've contracted a friend to grow out about 100 plants for a seed crop - which hasn't flowered yet, so hoping it was a mislabelling on my growout, and the seed crop is OK.
fingers crossed.
I'll get som pics up soon - v busy at work atm.
T
While waiting for these to mature, I found some hypertendril yellow snows in another growout, so the appeal of crossing, then growing out for several years the hypertendril dwarfs to coloured snows is less than appealing, so I don't think I'll be doing the crosses. Ditto pink flowers. Easier to pick from the segregates of the yellow hypers, and perhaps play with flower colour in future years.
On a disappointing note, A 6 plant growout of what I thought was my purple mangetout Heather has turned out to be fiberous - damn - lovely big pods, lots of purple, and now fibre - dunno how it happened, - mislabelled packet? dodgy collection, mixed bags? hangover when i did the fibre assessment a few seasons ago? Doubling disappointing - I've contracted a friend to grow out about 100 plants for a seed crop - which hasn't flowered yet, so hoping it was a mislabelling on my growout, and the seed crop is OK.
fingers crossed.
I'll get som pics up soon - v busy at work atm.
T
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