How are your peas doing?

[steev]

Is that where they are to grow? Is the coldframe portable? The notion of such prompts me to think that the white (somewhat translucent) plastic barrel that I cut in half, so I can use it to cover transplants in the p'up for transport with bags of bunny-beans piled on, would prolly serve as a tempo-coldframe if I drilled some strategic vents to avoid baking plants. Don't know where I can score some white barrels at the moment, but I can re-purpose the one, replacing it with a less-translucent blue one that I have, for p'up use.

[blueadzuki]

How are my peas doing? It's a bit hard to say. I went out to check on them, and after a little light brushing I can at least say a few are still there. However that's "a few" not "all" or even "most". I don't know definitively how many (it's a mottled skinned pea, so the seeds tend to blend into the soil) but the number that have REALLY taken (in that they have actual sprouts) is about 3. Sort of the percentage I expected, what with the animals and such but I really hope the fewer plants produce enough seeds to allow me to keep going; I really don't like having so few I have to commit all of them each year to re-growth and have no backup supply (or any extra to actually eat).

[steev]

Thinking of portable coldframes, could you protect them with a plastic jug, the bottom cut off, and no cap, to deter pests?

The peas I thought were eradicated by birds seem to just have been very slow to sprout (sure looked like they'd been drilled out); got to get the vetch off them ASAP, so they have a shot at success. I suppose there is some critical soil-temp below which they just won't sprout, so those planted before that temp got a head-start, and those after are now playing catch-up.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Mar 21, 2016 17:14:58 GMT -5 steev said:

Is that where they are to grow? Is the coldframe portable? The notion of such prompts me to think that the white (somewhat translucent) plastic barrel that I cut in half, so I can use it to cover transplants in the p'up for transport with bags of bunny-beans piled on, would prolly serve as a tempo-coldframe if I drilled some strategic vents to avoid baking plants. Don't know where I can score some white barrels at the moment, but I can re-purpose the one, replacing it with a less-translucent blue one that I have, for p'up use.

Well, yeah that's where these particular peas are going to grow. There's only a few plants in this spot, but they seem to be in ok condition. This is my first coldframe that i just threw together. Where my hinges are there are actually quite wide gaps, so in some ways that helps to vent excess heat, but it probably lets some heat out at night too. It probably only heats things up a tiny bit, but i guess it works well as a protector if nothing else.

Technically i guess it's portable. It's not overly heavy and has a hollow bottom. I just don't have any other good use for it to plan on moving it right now. I've never seen bird predation on pea seedlings here, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Rabbits or deer would be a more likely concern for me. The other peas are planted with no covering along their trellis. I haven't seen any sprout yet, but other than the melted snow from friday they haven't got much water.

[blueadzuki]

Depends on the pests. Birds maybe, but where they are, their main menaces are the squirrels and the chipmunks, and I think that both of them could (and would) simply gnaw through the plastic to get at them. At the moles and voles don't usually travel overland so I usually only have to worry about the above ground pests.

Ironically in my case, it looks like the peas are outgrowing the vetch (in the pot next to them) They've barely grown at all (I can barely find them among the leaf litter)

[steve1]

steev I've had pods in the fridge for a few weeks and at 3' C they noticed yesterday some are growing roots in the pod - but no shoots. Not the first time I've seen that either.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Peas in the coldframe are rather large now. They look about full size to me. They aren't flowering yet. I hope the two flower at the same time so i can cross the purple seeded but spindly Purple Passion to the strong but extra dwarf Mighty Midget pea. That would make for an excellent cross.

All my breeding peas are now up though and about 1" tall right now. Some seedlings are clearly hyper-tendrilled which i like (aka semi-leafless), such as Sugar Magnolia and Canoe/Markana.

As a bonus i saw early starting of teosinte or teosinte-hybrids peeking out of the soil.

It sure is cold today though. I even have some early planted beans growing fine. Go figure.

[steev]

Having carefully hand-weeded the various peas, I still think the birds got them prior to the weeds growing; looks like 1% to 5% sprouts among those varieties. My Austrian field peas are doing fine, but I was hoping for seed-increase and chow from various others.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

A few peas have been chomped on here and there, but overall they are all doing well. The ones in the coldframe have pods formed or are forming. I think the reason the mighty midget peas are not midget in the cold frame is because i had sprayed them with a little gibberellic acid when they were young. Oh my, what an effect..

There are a few non-sprayed mighty midget peas in the middle of my "pea circle" that are midget. Orange-Pod seems to also a midget or "extra dwarf" pea, and Canoe/Markana being the only noticeable dwarf pea.

The annual teosinte and/or diploperennis-corn hybrids are growing fine in the middle of the pea circle. (this is an attempt to protect them from racoons later in the season.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

My first flower on any of my normal planted peas was spotted today. It looked to be a rather short node. It was on Mighty Midget my extra dwarf pea that is consistently the earliest to bloom for me (other than Tom Thumb which i did not plant this year).

Today i attempted a few crosses between The tall gibberellin treated Mighty Midget in the cold frame with the Purple Passion also planted in the cold frame (planted in february?). I even labeled them with fancy jewelers tags this time


All the other peas are starting to get rather tall. Except for Canoe which is a dwarf, Dwarf Grey Sugar, and Orange-Pod which appears to be even shorter than Mighty Midget(!). So much so they are partially shading the Teosinte and corn hybrids within the circle.



Watermelon seedlings are starting to come up (if they hadn't germinated already). Some melons mixed in there too, somewhat hard to tell the difference. I'm having a hard time weeding in some areas. But i think i will get enough even if these were all the ones that germinated and grew.

I'm having a hard time with some of my tomato seedlings. Many of them died when i may have put them outside a few weeks too early. However some have survived and i will pot them up later, and i planted a few large ones yesterday. I will do my best to see if i have any seeds for the others that i can replant now. I planted three 'Anasasi' tomatoes next to each other for my conductive helical coil experiment that is finally built. One will have a full strength coil, another will have one with slightly fewer turns, and the third will have none and will be the control. (https://keen101.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/do-plants-really-need-sunlight/)

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Some new Pea photo's from my garden this year. I have some nice segregating yellow crescent shaped snaps that remind me of Rebsie's 'Luna Trick' line. Since Rebsie never released Luna Trick and i was always somewhat fond of it perhaps i can select and breed my own approximation of it, so i am quite pleased with this segregation. And i consider this to be quite of good size for a snap pea as many of them seem to be tiny pods, so that is another bonus. I am disappointed slightly by the yellows greening up a bit at the end of their prime. Something that i would like to try and improve someday (and perhaps with the orange-pod gene). Here is a photo of the few remnants of the 'Midnight Snow' Pea line that has purple pods in a snow pea pod. Very nice. Here is a photo of one of my successful crosses from last year (Salmon-flowered X Sugar Magnolia). You can see that it still has retained much of it's umbel and fasciated structure even in the F1, but it clearly has partially purple pods. This is a photo of my first pea pollinator. I actually don't think it was pollinating them, i think it just landed to take a rest. It was falling off the peas later, so i suspect it may have gotten pesticide poisoning somewhere. But my garden is pesticide free. I have even seen this year a few tiny red ground burrowing bees that i've never seen before. This is a photo of an early Orange-Pod gene pod on the inside. It is still early, and it may be hard to tell from the photo, but there is a light orange color forming on the inside of the pod and seems to be getting darker as time goes on. There is even a slight orange tint on the axil/sepal part of the flower stems and i think when it gets darker may even show through slightly on the green pods. If this trait we combined with the yellow-pod gene (gp) that seems to get more green as the pods mature and this gene getting more orange as the pod matures then perhaps a yellow pod that retains it's yellowness longer may be achievable.

[steve1]

keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) great pictures! After a long think about the 'greenish' yellow of the yellow snaps I came to the conclusion after looking at pods with blank seeds that a good portion of the greenish colouration was due to the pod translucency and the mature green seeds. I can't think of a fix for that...

[templeton]

hey keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.),
that purple podded snow has a slightly wrinkled pod, which I've noticed in some of mine.Is this a trait, do you think, or an artefact of the bloom making it more discernible?

[ferdzy]

That Salmon Crown x Sugar Magnolia is really pretty. Interesting combination too!

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Jun 26, 2016 0:54:44 GMT -5 templeton said:

hey keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.),
that purple podded snow has a slightly wrinkled pod, which I've noticed in some of mine.Is this a trait, do you think, or an artefact of the bloom making it more discernible?

Hmm... good question. On first thought i don't think all of them had the slight wrinkling, so it may be a trait. If so, it could just be an unnoticed segregation. I will have to pay more attention on that.