Doing the cross in reverse today has really shown me how variable pea buds are in their maturity. I said in my earlier post that the buds were about right just as the petals began to protrude from the sepals, but that's only a starting point. In search of Alderman pollen I cut into a young bud which was only just starting to open ... only to find the pollen was all spent. The stamens were withered and the only traces of pollen were white and dusty and useless. Clearly Alderman buds complete their pollination process long before the flowers open, and I had to open up some very small buds to find any viable pollen. Conversely, Mr Bethell's Purple Podded still has copious amounts of pollen when the flowers are fully open, and may even still be viable as the flower dies off. This makes all my hand-pollination efforts a matter of trial and error ... because I don't really know which buds are going to work best. That's why I'm doing lots of them. Maria: The Daughter of the Soil Foundation has been established with a vision of building an empowered and thriving community of women across agriculture in Africa. We are creating a network of women farmers supported through entrepreneurship, education and technology and with the aim of broadening their horizons and providing the tools for self-empowerment and efficacy. We hope to create a movement of empowered women, each taking away the vital ability to be the best version of herself . After watching their epic performance, I said to Lorraine: “ we need to interview these two very inspiring women“. We were so proud of them and what they had achieved so far and we really wanted to share their story with the rest of our community.

What's even more curious is that Phil's message arrived at the very same time I was scanning my Somme slides, as part of an ongoing effort to digitise my archive of film photographs taken during the 20 years before I went digital. I was literally right in the middle of sorting out the Albert pictures.

Potato apples are not a lot of use ... they just divert energy away from the tubers. But to nerds who like raising brand new things from seed they are a gift. Inside them are lots of seeds which, if planted and viable, will grow into a new and unique potato variety. Potatoes don't tend to come true from seed, so even if my fruit was self-pollinated or pollinated by another Marfona plant, the resulting offspring would not be Marfona. It would be a reshuffled combination of various genes that went into Marfona. That doesn't mean it will be anything special ... but it will probably be unique. I like a challenge like that, and I soon found the reason for his problem. James' Longkeeping was deleted from the National List in 1993. So it's unlikely to have been offered for sale anywhere since then. No matter how popular or commercial a variety is, deletion from the National List can send it plummeting towards extinction in no time at all. Blue Prussian. — A well-known excellent pea. We notice it here merely to give the synonymes — early Dutch green, fine long-podded dwarf, dwarf blue Prussian, royal Prussian blue, Prussian prolific, and green Prussian.

Lovely plump HUGE seeds from an Alderman x Mr Bethell's Purple Podded cross ... even if there are only three in a pod. This is just a general update on my progress with the peas so far. In my usual disorganised fashion I've ended up with two main projects and a large number of sub-projects, but that's all part of the fun. The early varieties were probably quite coarse by today's standards, closely derived from the field pea. Sweeter and more refined peas made their way to England from the continent in the mid-17th century. These would mainly have been French varieties, as the French had made huge advances in pea breeding at that time, plus the highly expensive Sandwich pea which originated in Holland and was established in the town of Sandwich by Dutch settlers. By the early 18th century the pea had become a popular garden plant and a fashionable delicacy, and new varieties proliferated. In the bean garden, Kew Blue has started flowering. The buds are a rich purple but open up into a slightly scruffy pink-mauve flower. No pods yet either ... the first few flowers have fallen off without setting. That seems to be normal though for most beans. While they're actively growing the plants seem to focus all their energies on surging upwards. Trionfo Violetto, whose flowers are a similar colour but more elegantly presented, has started to set pods now. The Meraviglia di Venezia (both these varieties are from Seeds of Italy) is growing faster and has reached the top of the arch but has not flowered yet (it's a late maturing variety). The pods are a reasonable size with a lovely deep violet-purple colour. They glow translucently in the sun, taking on a dusky dark purple in lower light. Eaten raw at the young stage they are very juicy and crunchy (and the purple colour goes right the way through them) but have a slight bitterness.It therefore falls to the charitable organisations and concerned individuals to rescue and distribute as many non-commercial varieties as they can. Most European countries have their own seed saver organisations. It may seem a bit mad to suggest that anyone would actually be prosecuted just for selling vegetable seeds, but that's exactly what happened in France, where the government's 'fraud squad' ruthlessly crushed the seed saver charity Terre de Semences after they started selling seeds in garden centres. Undeterred, they resurrected themselves as Association Kokopelli and continue to distribute 1200 varieties of amazing heirlooms, under constant threat of persecution.

Maria: A brand that has skin health, women empowerment and bio-diversity as its conscience and is loved by all for our amazing and effective product range. I'm beginning to think my destiny here is to run some larger scale and more scientifically rigorous trials of purple-podded peas. The thing is, they've only just started appearing commercially in the last couple of years and are still something of a novelty ... so most of the ones you come across in catalogues are just called Purple Podded (the only named variety I've seen is Ezetha's Krombek Blauwschok). But the big differences between mine and the one in the Rococo Garden clearly shows they aren't all the same variety. Some are advertised as having purple flowers, others pink, others bicoloured. Mine have large sweet peas while the Heligan vegetable book describes their purple-podded peas as "virtually inedible". So I'm going to buy up a selection of purple-podded varieties from anywhere I can find them and grow them all together next year for comparison. See how similar or different they really are. D'Auvergne— 4 feet; seeds white; remarkable for its long crooked pods, and the great number of moderate sized peas each pod contains; one of our best for second or general crops. This is identical with Richardson's eclipse and Torwoodlea, two Scotch synonymes. I recently read something in the Guardian which made me shudder. A top UK businessman was quoted as saying that British garden centres are "ripe for consolidation". That's right, gardeners are under threat from the same mass-market homogenised blandness that afflicts the nation's High Streets.

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By 1945 he was a Major. He was tasked by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with building the Cemeteries in Normandy, France, after the landings, and later to assist in rebuilding the 1st world war cemeteries in France. Seed sowing has begun, with onions and peppers on the go. Peppers take a while to germinate and need warmth so I've got mine precariously balanced on a tray above the radiator. If you're outside the UK, please let me know what you want and I'll calculate the postage. Some countries don't allow international seed swapping. Regrettably that includes the US, which has introduced pointlessly draconian import rules for seeds. Champion of England is looking fairly typical of an old-fashioned tall pea. The flowers are small-ish and a very slightly creamy white. And it has long, long pods which look like they're going to have 9 peas in them. So that's why I've only used Mr Bethell's Purple Podded as a 'father' until now. But the shortage of appropriate sized buds on Alderman means I now have to hedge my bets a little.

Marfona may not look as exciting as some of the others, but the texture and flavour are out of this world Meanwhile, t'other cat (the ginger peril) has taken to harvesting his own beetroot and chasing them along the garden path. Hair's defiance Knight's marrow. — 4 feet high, remarkable for its strong habit, should be planted from 4 to 6 inches apart in the rows, and each row 4 feet distant. A remarkably profitable pea, of large size, and continuing long in a bearing state.

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Knight's dwarf marrow— 3 to 4 feet. There are two varieties of Knight's dwarf marrow, differing, we think, only in the colour of the dried seed, the one being white, the other greenish. However, either is valuable for a general crop. The bluish green variety appears to be preferred by Mr Thompson. Like all the marrows, the seeds are large. Pods large, containing six peas in each, and of excellent flavour; quite sugary. I'm growing a daft number of tomato varieties this year. But because of space restrictions I'm not able to grow more than three of each variety. Not ideal, I know, but them's big plants.