I was lucky enough to receive the variety Elisabeth, a lovely salmon-pink flowered Mange-tout pea, from a friend and I have enjoyed growing it the last few years.
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| Elisabeth Pea |
It's a climber and looks particularly pretty growing alongside white and magenta purple pea vines.
I've made several crosses using Elisabeth and the inspiration for this cross came when I grew Sugar Magnolia a purple podded sugar snap variety, bred in the US by Dr Alan Kapuler, alongside Elisabeth. The purple pods were such a pretty contrast, I thought it would be fun to see if the two traits could be recombined in one variety. I've given the working name Sugar Beth to the resulting F1 plants/F2 seed.
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| Sugar Beth F1 |
As you can see they have purple magenta flowers,
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| Sugar Beth F1 |
purple splodges in the leaf axils
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| Sugar Beth F1 |
and partly purple pods, all in all very pretty.
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| Sugar Beth F1 |
The couple of pods I tasted raw were very tasty and very much a mangetout type, no hint of fibre in the pods.
When first harvested the seeds looked to be green seeded although now they have dried further there are subtle variations.
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| F2 Seed |
The dried pods are quite soft and fragile to the feel and none of them appeared thick and fibrous.
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| Non fibrous pods |
I'm looking forward to seeing how they segregate this season, it would be great to get some different colour combinations.
For pictures of Sugar Beth F2 progress have a look here Growing Food Saving Seeds
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