Although I started late, my peas are doing well. The tall varieties are about 2ft tall (of course the short ones are shorter!) now and they all look absolutely beautiful, and it probably won't be too long before they think about flowering, and then I can start to actually make crosses.
The first one I'm going to talk about is Golden Sweet x Purple Podded. I've mentioned this before, but in order to get red pods I need yellow pods with purple/red anthocyanin pigments laid over it - Golden Sweet has the yellow, and Purple Podded of course has the purple.
Showing posts with label plan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plan. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Pod colours, and some genetics
There's a surprising amount of variety in the colours of pea pods. We all know the standard green ones, but it's possible to get the following as well:
*Purple (courtesy of the Guardian)
*Yellow (grown by me, years ago)
*Red (courtesy of the lovely Rebsie Fairholm)
*Bluish-green (no picture, sorry, but I am growing a couple of types with this colour so I can show you later in the year)
*Purple (courtesy of the Guardian)
*Yellow (grown by me, years ago)
*Red (courtesy of the lovely Rebsie Fairholm)
*Bluish-green (no picture, sorry, but I am growing a couple of types with this colour so I can show you later in the year)
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Breaking down the plan
This project is going to to take literally years.
I can grow one generation of peas every year (you can squeeze in a second one, but a second sowing may well not be as successful and might waste my precious breeding material).
This year, I plan to do basically two things.
1) Grow out my breeding material, and save as many seeds as possible for next year. For some of the peas I'm growing, I only have 4 or 5 seeds so I'll need to increase their numbers.
2) Make some crosses with the material I have. Hopefully I can perform each cross 5 times. I haven't decided on all the crosses yet, but my plants are only small so far and not even close to flowering, so I have plenty of time to think about it.
Next year I'll grow out and increase some more varieties, as well as the results of my crosses. Those crosses won't start to show me what I'm actually looking for until the year after that, and may require a few more years to get the exact combination I want.
Once I have what I want, it will require seven generations to stabilise it and basically get rid of all the traits I don't want. Like I said, it's going to take a while.
I can grow one generation of peas every year (you can squeeze in a second one, but a second sowing may well not be as successful and might waste my precious breeding material).
This year, I plan to do basically two things.
1) Grow out my breeding material, and save as many seeds as possible for next year. For some of the peas I'm growing, I only have 4 or 5 seeds so I'll need to increase their numbers.
2) Make some crosses with the material I have. Hopefully I can perform each cross 5 times. I haven't decided on all the crosses yet, but my plants are only small so far and not even close to flowering, so I have plenty of time to think about it.
Next year I'll grow out and increase some more varieties, as well as the results of my crosses. Those crosses won't start to show me what I'm actually looking for until the year after that, and may require a few more years to get the exact combination I want.
Once I have what I want, it will require seven generations to stabilise it and basically get rid of all the traits I don't want. Like I said, it's going to take a while.
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