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.

Major Cook was my father. Trained at Kew, London, where he was a Student in 1939. His first job was to train people to grow their own food as part of the war effort. Then he joined up in the Army in 1940, to be sent to various Arab nations on various missions for 5 years. Prolific flower clusters forming on Clementine, a French variety which will have small golden yellow citrusy fruits 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. Knight's tall marrow—6 to 7 feet ; seed large ; wrinkled or indented when dry; white. Often called Knight's tall white marrow, to distinguish it from Knight's tall green marrow. Originated with the late Mr T. A. Knight ( vide sect. PROPAGATION BY SEED). Very much esteemed for its productiveness and fine flavour. Like all the tall marrows, only fit for a large garden, and then to be grown in single rows, at a great distance apart. Adapted for general crops. Pods large—from seven to nine peas in each; known also as Knight's late, Knight's tall green marrow, Knight's tall blue marrow.Sweet peas growing through the sagging remains of my Alderman crop. I'm a great believer in mixing up pretty flowers among the veg. For most things it encourages better pollination, although peas don't need bees so in this case it's purely decorative.

The project offered the opportunity for me to chronicle the lives and stories of these women. Women aren’t as visible as men on farms, but we are seeing them more often,” says Joanne.“The female workforce are driving tractors, having a social media presence, and can be seen on the telly but they don't often inherit land or work in leadership positions.” The first potato I harvested this year, a few weeks ago, was Maris Bard. It's a modern variety and a first early. Its flavour is absolutely wonderful. I only had one plant and its produce didn't hang around long enough to be photographed. There's enough there to provide a tantalising taster anyway. I'm finding that the pods are lovely as mangetout if you use them when they're small; once the peas start to swell inside they go a bit stringy. They are a beautiful maroon-purple (translucent in sunlight) but lose some of their colour when they're cooked ... still retaining enough to make them a show-stealer at dinner. The flavour is not outstanding when they're larger but if you use them young they're very sweet indeed.Meanwhile, t'other cat (the ginger peril) has taken to harvesting his own beetroot and chasing them along the garden path. Even when the plants have completed their life cycle and started to die off, their beauty takes on a new phase. The leaves fade to a golden yellow flushed with rose, and the magenta in the leaf axils and stems becomes very deep and intense. The overall effect is very striking as the green gives way to all these other shades, and makes a beautiful contrast with the pods. 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.

McIntosh conducted his own trials in the large gardens of Dalkeith House in 1850 and 1851, comparing 100 varieties, and finding 23 worthy of mention. Even in those days, the commercial varieties involved a trade-off in flavour: "Bishop's new long-podded, Thurstone's reliance, Hair's dwarf mammoth— all first-class pease for profitable culture—must not be calculated upon to afford a supply for mouths genteel." His results are attached below in a separate post, listing all the varieties he considered to be worthy and all those he thought were duplicates. Sadly only a tiny handful of the peas he describes are still known to be in existence. Maria: At the moment, I can’t get enough of the Baobab & Rooibos Body Wash because it is so refreshing and uplifting! It effectively cleanses and conditions my skin at the same time. I love to follow with a light textured, silky smooth Baobab & Rooibos Body Lotion.There is a good reason why I've only used Alderman as the 'mother' plant until now. Alderman is a true-breeding green-podded variety; it has no trace of purple whatsoever. So if I hybridise it with a purple variety and grow the seed, and some of the resulting plants are purple, I will know for certain that those plants are the result of a successful cross. If some of the plants turn out green, I can probably assume they were the result of the bud having self-pollinated before I got to it. This is because the gene for purple colouring is dominant, so I am expecting all the plants of the first (F1) generation to be purple if they crossed successfully (I can't be 100% sure about that, since other unknown factors may turn out to screw things up, but it's a reasonable assumption at this stage). Being able to accurately identify the successful crosses in the F1 generation will save me time and heartache. Now, I know some people baulk at the cost of joining and it certainly isn't the cheapest way to acquire seeds. But the varieties they offer really are special, and many of them are unavailable anywhere else. I've consistently been delighted and amazed by the things I've had from them. Six choices may not seem a lot either, and I must admit I agonise over my selections because there are so many things in their catalogue I'd love to grow. But to be honest it does me good, because it forces me to think very carefully about each variety ... exactly why I want it and what I expect to get from it. A cross between what are probably my two favourite pea varieties, and the F1 hybrid showed many of the best traits of both. The pods are beautifully marbled and mottled with purple and green. This marbling is quite common in a hybrid between a green-podder and a purple-podder (probably co-dominance of the respective colour genes) but they don't usually have colours and patterns as attractive as these. They are really beautiful. Kew Blue on the other hand is meant as a pods-an'-all fresh bean, and it's very swish. Mine is now starting to set pods in great numbers, and they're dead straight (when young at least), velvety and very slender. They're a dark purple colour with a flush of green in the younger pods. They look much more elegant than the pods on my other purple bean, Trionfo Violetto, and I have to say they trump it for taste too. I had some steamed this evening, and they were sweet and lovely. Very fine indeed. The colour changes to dark green after cooking, and they have a very nice texture. I think I can recommend this variety if you want beautiful plants and super-tasty pods ... it looks to me to be the best of the climbing beans I've grown. As far as I know it's only available from the Heritage Seed Library. I know it looks like a green tomato, but it's actually a potato apple. It came off one of the plants I harvested, and none of the others have any. You don't see them very often because potatoes have got accustomed to reproducing by tubers and most of them no longer bother to set fruit. Some varieties can't be arsed to flower at all, and those that do often produce ineffective pollen. But some spuds produce these tomato-like fruits, emphasising how closely related they are to tomatoes. And to the nightshade family too. Potato apples are poisonous. If the tomato is known as an edible wolfpeach (that's what Lycopersicon esculentum means) then I guess this is an inedible wolfpeach.

The hand-pollinations were ostensibly successful. I have several nice plump pods full of home-made F1 hybrid seeds waiting for the right moment for harvest, and have gathered in a few already. They don't generally have as many peas in them as a naturally self-pollinated pod, but that's normal. En eventail. — About 1 foot in height; assuming the habit of Bishop's long pod, and, like it, branching close to the ground ; a moderate bearer. To the best of my knowledge, Prince Albert and Champion of England are the only ones that have survived to the present day. They're both very rare and can only be obtained through seed savers organisations.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. There are many benefits associated with using all natural skincare products, from improving the health of your skin to contributing to a safer environment. With high quality, effective natural or naturally-derived skincare alternatives available today, going fully natural was an easy decision for us to make when we were creating our products. 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. 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. Hear how Maria and Hellen came up with the name and inspiration for their brand (SPOILER: it’s a great story. Like, really great).