Winter peas

[ottawagardener]

With only four peas, I"d vote for home. Unless the growing conditions are way off, it's a good way of keeping an eye on them. One year, I had a variegated (chimera) pea show up in my indoor pea sprouts. They grew, flowered and began to pod indoors and finished outdoors in part shade (I was afraid of sticking them into the sun after all that) and gave me seeds that produced the second generation of chimera plants.

[templeton]

Mar 25, 2012 14:54:25 GMT -5 raymondo said:

T, what a disappointment. Do you think you'll recreate that particular F1?

More annoyance than a setback, Ray. I do have more than enough to get on with. Last spring I just crossed everything with everything - keen to get started but not enough knowledge, I figured that I should make the crosses while I had flowers, and then decide which lines to continue when I had more idea about the characteristics of the parents.
So last week I just sowed every F1 cross ;D
Joseph, I'm reminded of Carol Deppe's advice - with special seed, don't do anything different.
T

[cortona]

some photo's of my peas sowed in october and overwintered good despite the cold winter that is uncommon here

[12540dumont]

Wow, they look great. Favas look good too!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I found the perfect winter-hardy/cold-tolerant shelling pea for my garden today... The volunteer seed(ling) survived the winter, and was already 4" tall. The peas planted just after snow-cover melted are just barely sprouting... Then 4/10th second later it was dead. There was no time to stop the tractor before it was tilled under. Tilling was very easy today so I was in 2nd gear... If I had been in 1st gear there would have been time to stop. So much clever germplasm, so much random chaos that either preserves it or takes it out.

I'd looked for survivors a half dozen times by walking through last year's pea patch and didn't see it previously: Boo Hoo, I've got two more pea patches to walk through... I'll check them more carefully, just in case.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Joseph, was it a pea that germinated on it's own this spring or one that had germinated in the fall/winter and had survived until you plowed it under? Last year we had a volunteer pea seed sprout early from a stray seed from 2 years ago (eating seeds strait from the pods and several fell). It produced 3 nice pods that were delicious. I'm fairly certain that most peas would do well if planted in the fall and left dormant until the spring, but maybe not where you live?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 12, 2012 1:31:52 GMT -5 keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) said:

Joseph, was it a pea that germinated on it's own this spring or one that had germinated in the fall/winter and had survived until you plowed it under? Last year we had a volunteer pea seed sprout early from a stray seed from 2 years ago (eating seeds strait from the pods and several fell). It produced 3 nice pods that were delicious. I'm fairly certain that most peas would do well if planted in the fall and left dormant until the spring, but maybe not where you live?

I don't know... It looked like a normal young pea, and not like a sprout from a semi-dead vine (that was visible above ground). I planted 60 shelling pea seeds in a short row last fall that were maybe 3" tall when winter arrived. They were all dead by spring. Thousands of pea seeds and young plants of various ages got tilled into the soil last fall. So it could have survived as a (possibly buried) plant, or as a non-germinated or winter-germinated seed. My cultural practices have generally not allowed for selection of volunteer peas, but I would classify shelling pea overwintering as a rare occurrence in my garden.

I tilled about two acres today. I found and left volunteers for: garlic, Utah yellow Spanish onions (overwintered bulbs), lettuce, winter wheat, and of course chives and Egyptian Onions. I didn't find any volunteer spinach. Some spinach seeds I planted last fall survived and are growing, but it seems like the spinach seeds adhered firmly to the stems during harvest.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Several peas came up in a bed where no peas were planted this year. I can only conclude that they were seeds from last years pea crop, since that is roughly the spot they were planted in. They are all over the place in that bed. Probably about 8 or 9 of them. Peas seeds seem to over-winter fine here and seem to be able to germinate on their own just fine. But perhaps they survive because i don't bury them in the ground. Perhaps overwintering above ground and overwintering underground are two very different things.

[olddog]

keen101,
I think you brought up a good point there, about overwintering above and below ground, and think you may be right. It is great they overwintered, as your climate is pretty cold, seems like.
Seeds are amazing!
olddog

[Joseph Lofthouse]

On November 23rd, I finished running a germination test on some shelling pea seed. I took the germinated seeds out to the garden and planted them. Snow cover arrived about two weeks later and stayed until last night. This morning when I visited the garden I found that the peas had sprouted under the snow and were about an inch tall. They are yellow as can be. I figure that they will green up with a couple days of light.

Spinach that I planted the next day also germinated under the snow. And the Egyptian onions are eager to grow. No sign of sprouts yet from the GRIN garlic bulbils.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Today I scoured the fields looking for volunteer peas. I found a lot of them. We had snow many days last week, and temperatures in the low 20s. Some of the peas were severely damaged. Some of them seemed unfazed by the cold. So I collected about 30 of the healthiest looking plants and transplanted them into a row in my main field.

I separated them into two groups as best as I could based on where they were growing and what the seed looked like: shelling peas and snow/snap/soup peas.

The thick patch of volunteer peas that germinated under the snow looks very sad: Yellow leaves. There were a few green unfazed plants among them, but I didn't collect peas from there, I figure I'll let that patch grow and see what comes of it.

The Austrian winter peas are doing fine. I didn't collect plants from that patch either.

I also planted F1 seed for [early shelling peas X Austrian Winter pea]. I have some F2 seed for that, but it wasn't in my box of tricks so I need to look for it before I go to the garden next time.

The row of shelling peas I planted in November is doing fine. I should go weed it to eliminate any plants that suffered badly from the cold.

Either by selection or by breeding I intend to get a winter hardy shelling pea for my garden. Getting peas to market earlier would be really clever.

[steev]

Anybody eaten those Austrian field peas? I suppose they might be a decent soup pea.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, As well as if you get that market cornered, you can work on soup peas, which like beans, you can take to market whenever you like!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I'm thinking that I would be super embarrassed to take soup peas to market... I have a tremendous weevil population, and since I don't use pesticides it's tough to pick soup peas that look good enough for people's current fussy standards regarding bug bites on food. I can freeze them to kill the larva when they are still very tiny, but they leave a mark. I thought at one time that I would select for peas that were more resistant to weevils. Perhaps I could also select for a dark colored speckled pea so that even if a bug bite existed on the seed that it wouldn't be obvious.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

A couple nights ago, I cooked up a batch of the Austrian Winter peas by putting them in a pot and simmering. After 1 hour (at my high altitude) they were soft, but a bit mealy. After 2 hours they were just right for my liking. About 95% of them kept their shape while cooking. Enough of them disintegrated to thicken the broth nicely. They tasted like soup peas... But what's to taste if there is sufficient garlic, salt, and onion in the broth?