GARDEN PEAS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 6 (Supplement)

GARDEN PEAS.

A lot of attention is given to the various varieties and new introductions of sweet peas, but many gardeners have very little time for the common, garden or culinary pea unless it is when served on a plate with lamb and mint sauce. It may be news to many that quite a large amount of work is being done in the way of selection of improved stocks and the raising of new varieties. Some of the English seed firms devote large areas to the growing of these trial plots Be as to enable them to keep their stocks clean and to test new sorts. One firm had trials of one thousand different strains, whilst another had 1600. New varieties well spoken of are Monster, not a heavy cropper, but with fat, round, square-ended pods of enormous size; Rearguard, later than Gladstone; Plentiful, a round-seeded Gladstone which crops heavily and succeeds where conditions are not ideal; Velocity, an improved Eclipse; Aviator will displace British Lion; Thomas Laxton, an old variety, ijut a very good cropper if from a selected stock; Admiral Beatty, a maincrop of excellent flavour; Onward, a heavy-cropping dwarf pea; one of the best was Prince Edward, a£ improved form of Alderman, which had long, straight pods, level haulms and a wonderful crop; Early Bird and Blue Bird are very early sorts; Primo-Stella and El Dorado all carry good pods and heavy crops, and are all improvements on the old variety Pilot; Meteor, an early dwarf variety; President has dark green pods and crops very heavily; Marathon was very good; The Victor, a heavy cropper, coming in just before Alderman, has larger individual seeds than any other variety. Some of these varieties are quite new, and may not be available for a year or so, but one or more of them should be marked out for a trial as soon \s. they are available.