Pea, Wolfpeach Purple Podded Population

Quick facts

• Rare pea population
• Very diverse seed shapes, colors, and sizes
• Continued breeding opportunity

Pisum sativum

Wolfpeach Purple Podded Pea Population is back- say that three times fast!  One of our goals as seed growers is to offer gardeners some diverse populations from which they can select the plants that grow best for them- becoming plant breeders in the process.  
All vegetables and heirloom vegetable varieties were once bred by amateur plant breeders selecting plants with traits they liked that grew well in their garden.  As the number of small farmers and gardeners that are saving seed has decreased in the last century or so, plant breeding geared toward the unique goals of small farmers and gardeners has decreased as well.  This has resulted in an overall loss of diversity in the genetics of our crop plants- leaving our food supply more genetically uniform and therefore vulnerable.  And we need vegetable varieties with traits that make them thrive in garden settings- not just in large scale commercial production!  Some examples might be veggie varieties that don't ripen all at once, climbing varieties that can be conveniently harvested by hand, or veggies that aren't rock hard at maturity- think juicy heirloom beefsteak tomatoes vs. tomatoes that can be shipped for miles without bruising. A number of organizations are working to preserve existing crop genetic diversity and enhance that diversity through encouraging gardeners perform simple plant breeding through crop selection.  Pea seeds are easy to save, even for beginning gardeners, and offering diverse populations like 'Wolfpeach' is our way of joining that movement!

About Wolfpeach:  Climbing pea cross between a Victorian purple podded pea and Oregon Sugar Pod II. The result is a mixture of snow peas with edible stringless pods and shelling peas in purple and green.  Flowers are light and dark purple and seeds are very diverse in shape and pigmentation.  Wrinkled seeds can be cuboial, cylindrical, or pyramidal and range from dark green to orange. Smooth seeds have fine purple speckling. As a diverse population, it throws about half green pods, half purple pods.  Continue the breeding work by taking this population the direction you would like- selecting for green or purple pods, shelling or snow peas, and saving the seeds!

This variety was crossed by Andy Davice in Oxford, UK around 1998, and was acquired by the Seed Savers Exchange.  

How to grow it: