From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. The dream has always been a rainbow of peas. That's what one of today's guests said to me more than a decade ago and that dream continues to fuel a passion for breeding colorful edible edible potted peas that the organically managed organ-based seed company called Peace Seedlings. Ready to think beyond your basic green pods and expand your palette to purple and yellow and even reddish shades, including ones with flowers and gorgeous colors that hummingbirds especially love to? Well, more in a moment, but first these messages. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends, wholesale flower bulbs, a third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. And by high-moving seeds, Wolcott Vermont, professional quality vegetable, flowerula and Mario de Benedetto, who founded Peace Seed Lings in 2009 after helping Delana's parents, Alan and Linda Capula, with their long-time seed breeding project called Peace Seeds. Delana and Mario had built on the impressive legacy of Alan Capula's decades of organic seed breeding, and I'm so glad to speak with them again today from Corvallis Oregon to talk about their continuing work and with colorful peas in particular. How are you both? Great. Doing good. Thank you. Yeah, busy busy is that seed season revving? It has been revving up this month. Definitely seed packing season and here in Oregon definitely spring always starts early and we're ready to start planting peas and all sorts of other. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Like much of the country we're frozen. Yeah we've had a very mild fall and I mean we saw winter. Yeah and now even the beginning of winter. I hardly had winter really. So yeah. Yeah, we were ready just to skip winter and go from fall to spring. But winter did decide to come last week for a few days. We had some low 20s. But nothing that peas can't take. At least we've selected ours. We plan them out early, usually February, sometimes even January. And in our climate, we have enough, you know, days, or nights in the 40s, days in the upper 40s, level 50s that they germinate come up and then by the time spring comes, they're ready to jam. Mm. So the sort of history of peas is started with your father, I suppose, Salana, yes, like breeding peas. So it's some of the oldest sort of genetic material or whatever you want to call it, some of the oldest varieties. How long ago do you think? Oh, Garsh. Yeah, my dad started growing, well, breeding peas in, uh, well, I'm sure probably 90s maybe actually even 80s Playing in the peas he really was inspired by Mendel and kind of blown away by all his discoveries and intrigue of peas in general and read a lot of about Mendel and Which is an old school way old school pee breeder for those that don't know. Sure, of course. There, yeah, his most people, but you know, I thought I'd throw that in there. He also really was kind of put off by all the P.B.P.'s and private privatization. Yeah, the privatization of a lot of the pee varieties that were available. And so he wanted to make peas that didn't have any strings attached. And so the first pea that he did was sugary, which is just your classic delicious yellow, I mean cream, excuse me, green vine pea, very standard, but was a step above the ones that had PVPs. So you could save your own seeds as much as you want. So it's kind of like the open source idea of of C genetic. So yeah, so that they were open pollinated slash open source. It wasn't nobody was like patting them, so to speak. Yep. You got it. Yeah. And then he also really was very quickly. It was like, well, how do I make a purple, edible purple pea? So he's been a good 20 years trying to do make the first of its class of edible purple pea, sap pea. And because there was, there was purple shelling peas or there's some old European varieties that were purple shelling peas. So the genetics were out there, but just not an edible potted purple. Oh, I didn't know that there was, we're shelling peas with the purple pot. That's interesting. Huh. So he spent the first decade making the cross in their own direction and didn't get anywhere but a bitter pea. And so then he went back and started making the crosses in a different direction and then created sugar magnolia, which was of its own kind. Delicious, really tall vine, purple flowered, purple potted, snappy. That's wonderful. And it's become quite a hit, I think. I mean, other seed companies carry it. It's become quite a thing. It's people, people love it. I think we've seen it and tried it. Yeah, it's definitely become one of the more distributed pee varieties that he bred probably at this point. Well, green beauty, green beauty was also a standard, more of a, more of a snow pee, but it really developed, and when you let it mature, I can, we kind of call it a snow snap because when you let it mature, it gets really and amazing and big and plump and it hands down one of the most amazing peas that he bred in my opinion in terms of flavor and diverse versatility we've gotten a lot of rave reviews about it. So that's green dude now. I believe you're sick I want to be spoke about peas not on the pie cusp which is together. You called them puffer pods. Is that right? Did I make that up? Was that what you called a puffer pods? We did use that terminology. Yeah, I mean, it is a unique trait. Yes. I mean, shell peas actually do it as well. They sort of puff up if you are paying attention. And a lot of people think that snow peas should be picked flat

which you can you can pick a snow pea flat that's fine but if you let them the seeds mature I mean just like a snapy there are a lot sweeter once they mature and a lot of snow peas are that way some get woodier but green beauty is one of those you let it fully puff up fully mature almost you know as fat as a snap but, but it's a snow pee, and it is the most delicious pee. And has that a unique crunch, that's the thing. The puffer pods have this crunch that's almost comparable to a potato chip or just that satisfying texture in your mouth. Right. Yeah. Right, yeah. No, I love it. That's the kind of pee that I like the most because it's sort of like you're getting the two for one thing and like you say it's a textual thing as well as a flavor thing. But it is counterintuitive as you see the pods get to a certain size if you have never grown one of these snow snaps. I think it's a good term that you've made up for them. If you've never seen what you're thinking, oh gosh, the pod's going to be all stringy and nasty and woody and I've let it go too far. I've let it go too far. It's going to be, you know what I mean? Yeah, because not all varieties can do that, can go that far. Yeah. Yeah. So your focus is really is edible-potted peas, right? Not shelling peas, is that correct? Yep.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Just one old heirloom. So your focus is really is edible potted peas, right? Not shelling peas, is that correct?

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much it. There's one old heirloom that we grow multi-star that's a bush, shell pea that we grow and offer in our seedless, but it's just because it's an awesome variety. And I love to have shell peas in the freezer, regardless of... But all the varieties that we have bred have... We've focused on edible pods of both snaps, snows and some that are yeah sort of in between. Right. And the colors like so so your father donna knew that Alan knew that there was purple in the genetics of peas in this other in the shelling peas and then he worked to try to get that in. There's you have some that are yellow pods and you have some that are almost like a, I don't know like they're blusher, reddishish, it's kind of looking at all kinds of stuff going on. I mean what, how does that all happen? Totally. So the yellow also, he did develop a yellow snapy that he's golden sweetie, which is a snowpe a wild Indian variety I believe to make um opal creek which is a yellow snap vine and so that was the yellow that he created and it's a well I'm gonna go off on tendrils for a second because it's a regular tendril pea which most people are more familiar with a regular tendril. It's got a curl with a handful of little curls off of it. Whereas he started breeding hypertendril pee as we call them which is more like, I mean I don't know the best way to call it is a hypertendril. It's really, it's like 10 tendrils put together or something. So it has the ability to hold on and grab, take care of itself better than most bees. They're a lot easier to trellis considering most all the bees we have bred so far are vines. They hold onto the trellis a lot better than regular tendril peas, and which is me to me like a big deal because I love peas, but definitely if you get some kind of stormy weather in the spring, you can end up with some peas pulling off the trellis if they're like tendril and hypertendril. So in a lot of the breeding that we've done, we've continued pushing for more and more hypertundual peas.

Right. No, it's a great, and the first time I saw it when I grew one of your varieties, I was like, what the heck is this? Because it's like really, it's a difference, you know, it's, I don't know if it's like 10 to 1 or whatever, but the little curly, QE things, you know, there's more of them, and they really do hold on.

And it's great.

It's quite different.

The other thing that's different is a lot of peas that are the sort of brand name, you know, generic ubiquitous pea varieties. Some of which are great tasting and so forth, but as you point out, a lot of them are kind of the patented types or whatever. They're not sort of open source. A lot of them have white flowers. And you have a lot that when I grew them, wow, like some of the flowers were just, you know, I thought it was almost like I was growing the floral sweet peas. You do know what I mean? It was like they're just beautiful flowers. So that diversity comes in from all over the place? That might have been from the purple potted peas, I think, was where that. That's a good question because, yeah, I mean, so Dolana's dad originally did, you know, making the sugar magnolia and the hyprotendril. So those purple genetics, I think one of the parents he used was this purple potted parsley pea, is what they call it. And instead of tendrils, it had leaflets. And it's a very unique, it's a bush pea, a shelling pea. The more I was salad plant is what it was like sent to him, like some friends sent it to him. Oh, you might be interested in this. This is a really cool salad plant. The tendrils, just like if anyone who doesn't know, pick the top of a pea or the tendril of a pea at the right stage and they're absolutely delicious. Like pea shoots, so to speak. It was pea greens, pea shoots, and greens. Yeah, fantastic, fantastic delicious, yeah. And then really nutritious. I mean, a lot of the other part that my dad was always really inspired by was how can we up the nutrition in regular vegetables that we already grow. And so that's always was part of the inspiration behind purple potted peas was purple potted peas are high at the sign, um, getting more nutrition in our diet and all the ordinary vegetables that we eat is just going to benefit all of us. Right. And so he didn't, I don't think, realize that crossing that partially, partially pee, they call it. So it had leaflets instead of tendrils. Crossing that with an regular tendril was what created the hypertendril. That was just an anomaly. Part of the breeding process, when you bring together unique, obscure genetics, sometimes what you hope for, is stuff to happen that you didn't even realize. That's good alchemy is getting greater than the sum of the original parts, something new happens. And so there was a lot of, to get his originally a sugar magnolia, the purple pod and the opal creek, the yellow, and this large green beauty, and a lot of, or at least green beauty and sugar magnolia, those are both purple flowers. So then we had a purple, a green, and a yellow. And so the the next thing was how do we get some of the rest of the rainbow? And it was actually a woman in Europe who had an online blog and Rebzy was I think her last name and she had this whole thing And this is when we were first starting in 2008 maybe, and she had a blog talking about making these bright red peas, and she had pictures of them, and they were totally amazing, super gorgeous, but they weren't edible pods. And so it was like, whoa, that's. And she was using what, let us down that rabbit hole, or my dad found it. And she was using some some of my dad's varieties as parents And so then I got lit the fire behind him again of oh my god We need to get back into this pee reading project Kind of set aside because of all the things that you do in life, you know, yeah Yeah, so the the the re the realization was that to get red you cross the purple and the yellow. I mean it seems pretty obvious

So you know we finally did that and that's where we got the ruby colors that purple over a yellow pod and that was as

Close as we had gotten to so then we have ruby beauty which is a snow and

Ruby crescent which is a snap of that similar color and we've pretty much Yeah, it's just a unique color. It's not quite the red that we had originally thought of creating at that moment when they're young They are pretty darn red as they mature the purple is more pronounced. So, you know, it's more of a ruby color. We were still excited. And the way they look in the garden when the sun comes through them is like the work of art. It's like stained glass. It's just really amazing. And they taste like this. And I feel like bringing new hue, which is pretty fun and amazing. So in breeding peas, are you out there like with a paintbrush moving pollen around or what are you doing? What's the thing? Inbreeding peas, not quite with the paintbrush, we use the flower, the, whatever, decapitated flower I guess as the paintbrush, but yeah. Okay, so you're moving your tagging flowers and touching them to one another. What a lot of people don't realize is that a pea flower, once it's opened, it's already pollinated. Yes. So they're very, they're not dependent on pollinators to make pods. They're fine and they're happy with bumblebees, really love them. Pollinators can come. The hummingbirds love them as you said of the purple flower

But the reality is is they've already pollinated themselves and so you don't get much outbreeding they call it Because of that they're they're pretty self fertile and so to make across. Yeah, you have to open a flower before it open Yeah, take you know break apart a flower before it opens and take

pollen from a different one that's mature and pollinate that flower so yeah it is of all of the breeding it is very hands-on meticulous work to first year if you're lucky you get four or five seeds and then you know definitely every every cross is a very coveted pod and even the next year I remember my three-year-old when she was little she went out and picked some peas I was like wait what are you doing you know every those first couple years are definitely very finite the number of seeds that you get. Yeah.. Mental must have been a patient man, huh? Apparently. You have no shortage of other legumes. I noticed I was looking at the list again this week on your website. And you have 15 kinds of edamame-type soybeans. You know, more green beans that I can count. And I mean, favas and you definitely have a thing for for for people to be. Well, well, don't you too. Yeah, I feel like part of it is I grew up vegetarian and my parents were always really passionate about having a diverse nutritious diet and obviously the gooms are some of the highest in amino acids. And my dad has always was really, always was really passionate about really, we don't need protein. We need all the amino acids that make up the pro, you know, the, the nourish us. Your body breaks proteins down into these free amino acids that's what we use. So just a different way of thinking about nutrition.

So the legumes are, Adam and vegetarian for probably 50 years already. So, you know, legumes are an important part of that diet. So I get it. And I didn't know that was your reasoning. So that's interesting. I mean, I don't think it's like a, I don't know, preconceived reasoning, but when you talk, When you say that, it makes that's what comes to mind.

It's probably the natural reason behind it.

I mean, there was also in the Malamah Valley,

people are growing soybeans and there was this amazing seed curator, Robert Lovitz, when my dad was part of the Seeds Avers Exchange network and he had this incredible list of soybeans. So him and my dad became seed allies and you know, male-order friends, so to say. And he started ordering a lot of his soybeans and testing them, seeing how they grew in the valley. And so then he started accumulating a collection of soybeans that grew really well for us. And I mean, Ed Amameyris is such a fun crop, so delicious and so easy to like freeze it and stash it. And yet not a lot of people realize how easy it is.

You know, it made me, it was like,

market, why aren't you growing these? Because I mean, if I go to a restaurant that has them, that's what I work, you know what I mean? I want a whole big bowl of, I mean, I love them. And, and you know, sort of just steamed with a little salt or whatever and you know, eat them whole. And so are they easy to grow?

Are they like growing peas or is there some...

Well, they're almost easier to grow.

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