Blue Egg Blog

Way back in 2009, I mused about breeding peas in my garden. I haven’t had much luck though, partly because I haven’t had much success growing, let alone breeding, peas. That is, until this year. I have managed to raise about half-dozen each of blue podded peas and golden sweets, and a couple of days ago I attempted to cross them.

young flower, ready to be pollinated

So first, a bit of background pea anatomy. Pea flowers are self pollinating, with both male organs (stamens) and female organs (stigmas). This makes cross pollinating a bit tricky. If the timing is off, the pea will self pollinate before it can be cross pollinated. To get around this, you need to pull out the flower’s stamens before they shed their pollen.

When cross pollinating, you need two flowers: a father and a mother. The mother needs to be a very young so that it hasn’t self pollinated, such as the one above. The father, on the other hand, should be mature so that it has a good store of pollen, as the one below. Once I had my flowers chosen, I opened up the younger one by peeling back the petals. I then removed the stamens to prevent self pollination. Next I gathered some pollen from a mature flower (below) into a petri dish.

Mature flower. Note the rich yellow pollen.

Once I had my flower and pollen prepped, I slathered a little bit of pollen onto the stigma of the younger flower (see below). If I did it right, a little pea pod will start to develop within the next couple of days, and the peas inside will be hybrids. I can then grow them out next spring, collect their seeds, and begin selecting for new traits!

An emasculated golden sweet flower pollinated with blue podded pea pollen.