Some antipodean notes

[templeton]

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

[Galina]

Goodness that is hot for peas. Difficult to keep them alive and producing. When did you sow these peas?

I hope you haven't lost Heather as a mangetout. Crossing it with Schweizer Riesen (Swiss Giant) is another way to introduce more mangetout genes. Fingers crossed for the bigger grow-out. Partial mangetout can appear as mangetout and it is only obvious in quite mature pods that a variety is not fully mangetout. Swiss Giant is the father variety of my Court Estate Gold. And certainly increased the size of Golden Sweet.

Are Kaspa and Gunya from a seed bank or are they commercially available in Australia?

I see that you are simplifying your breeding lines with regards hypertendril and pink flowers for the time being.

Looking forward to photos.

[jayb]

Sorry to hear drought is on the way. Good luck for your seed crop.
Looking forward to pictures too.

[templeton]

Goodness that is hot for peas. Difficult to keep them alive and producing. When did you sow these peas?

I hope you haven't lost Heather as a mangetout. Crossing it with Schweizer Riesen (Swiss Giant) is another way to introduce more mangetout genes. Fingers crossed for the bigger grow-out. Partial mangetout can appear as mangetout and it is only obvious in quite mature pods that a variety is not fully mangetout. Swiss Giant is the father variety of my Court Estate Gold. And certainly increased the size of Golden Sweet.

Are Kaspa and Gunya from a seed bank or are they commercially available in Australia?

I see that you are simplifying your breeding lines with regards hypertendril and pink flowers for the time being.

Looking forward to photos.

This is a bit unusually hot for us, even for an el nino. I did most of crosses in Mid november in previous years and it was rather starightforward - I had to butcher tiny little flowers to do crosses a couple of weeks ago.
I think you might be right re the 1/2 mangetout - I suspect I've been overly anxious to test, and only tested immature pods - which were quite edible. On reflection I should have noticed the powdery dry pod trait that Joseph Lofthouse referred to over on HG. I unthinkingly noticed this in my yellow snows, but didn't make the connection that it was missing in the purples when shelling for seed. Hope the grower I've given a pile of seed to for a tiny commercial crop picks early, and often - otherwise my rep with him will gone!
I'vw got Swiss giant growing in a multi variety growout, but I'm not impressed - mine at least has some fibre, I think. The Roi de Carouby is much nicer. have to do a pod count and see.
Rather than another cross and multi-generational growout to stabilise the dominant purple genes, i might just look for a purple mangetout in my red cross growout, where I've crossed a good yellow mange tout with my purple not quite snow, which should give all combos of yellow, red, green, purple, big pods, and the two low fibre genes. Another needle hunt in the mendelian haystack....

Kaspa and Gunya are commercial dry field peas covered by PVR I think, given to me by a friend, i can send you some (for hobby growing of course), when the seed dries down if you like. http://www.awb.com.au/growers/awbsee...maryGunyah.htm
T

[Galina]

Yes I had both pod types (full and semi mangetout) in the Schweizer Riesen/Swiss Giants, Luckily I must have picked the fibreless type for the cross that created Court Estate Gold. A bit of selection should sort them into all fibreless. Silverleaf mentioned that there is a small rate of fibreless mutating into semi-fibre, guess that must have happened to our Swiss Giants. By the way, I have always had 3 seed colours in Schweizer Riesen. Recently I got a commercial freebie and they only had the green/purple speckled seed in the packet. I wonder how they select for it. What seed colour/s are your Swiss Giants?

Yes warm weather flowers are much more difficult to work with. Hope your weather has improved and the plants are still going well. Unfortunately any woodiness in the pods also develops faster in hot weather. Fingers crossed for your grower. I made a cross between the red podded sheller and Charlie's Golden Sweet a few days ago (both second generation this year, so unlikely to get them to seed now - but the flowers were so large I did not need tweezers to do the crosses!

Thanks for the seed offer, but I have both of these traits in other varieties - Elisabeth and Spring Blush - and in tall, which is easier to handle for my growing conditions. I had never heard of these varieties so was curious to know more about them.

Do you have photos yet?.

[templeton]

I have got some pics, but too rushed this morning to find them on the camera, etc. Will get em up in the next few days.
T