Sutton's early Goliath.—4 feet; seed and pod large; in flavour resembling Knight's marrow-fats. Suited for a general crop, as it is an abundant bearer. The pods are a reasonable size with a lovely deep violet-purple colour. They glow translucently in the sun, taking on a dusky dark purple in lower light. Eaten raw at the young stage they are very juicy and crunchy (and the purple colour goes right the way through them) but have a slight bitterness. This first world war postcard shows what the basilica and golden virgin looked like in 1915, after a year of bombardment. You can imagine what state it was in by the end of the war.

Doing the cross in reverse today has really shown me how variable pea buds are in their maturity. I said in my earlier post that the buds were about right just as the petals began to protrude from the sepals, but that's only a starting point. In search of Alderman pollen I cut into a young bud which was only just starting to open ... only to find the pollen was all spent. The stamens were withered and the only traces of pollen were white and dusty and useless. Clearly Alderman buds complete their pollination process long before the flowers open, and I had to open up some very small buds to find any viable pollen. Conversely, Mr Bethell's Purple Podded still has copious amounts of pollen when the flowers are fully open, and may even still be viable as the flower dies off. This makes all my hand-pollination efforts a matter of trial and error ... because I don't really know which buds are going to work best. That's why I'm doing lots of them.Looking at it from the outside I wondered if it might share some ancestry with Fortyfold, because I detect a certain similarity in the wispy streaks of colour in the skin. But it doesn't have the same texture or flavour. We hope that you enjoyed listening to this episode and please get in touch with us if you have any question or comments.

We hope you enjoyed listening to the interview with Daughter of the Soil founders Hellen and Maria as much as we did. Maybe you now feel brave enough to dare Dragon’s Den or a similar programme in your country? Something very weird happened with my American tomatoes though. I think the faeries may have got to them. I very carefully planted six seeds (two of each variety) into a six-module planting tray. And eight plants germinated. The thing that makes this potato stand out from the crowd is its flavour. It's not easy to put into words, and really I just have to say it just tastes very potatoey. It's got a richness and complexity to it though. Potatoeyness elevated to a higher level of refinement, I guess. And it has a really smooth texture too, which is quite an important quality in a floury potato. Witch Hill is ultra floury, but it doesn't have that coarse dryness you often get in floury spuds. It's the ideal floury spud for people (like me) who normally only like waxies.

Why was it so important to create a 100% natural skincare range? And why did you choose baobab as one of the key ingredients? The town of Albert, Somme, where Major Cook was based. I took this photo while I was touring the battlefields in 1996. It shows a commemorative mural of the skydiving madonna, and the rebuilt basilica with the new statue on the top. 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.

Green pods and white flowers. Doesn't have many obvious Kent Blue traits at the F1 stage. It looks like Alderman, but nowhere near as vigorous. The F2 seed does look interesting though, with a mix of colours and round/wrinkled types. 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. Probably the first named variety of pea was the Hastings, which has its earliest reference in a poem of the mid-1400s, followed a century or so later by the Rouncival which sprung from the Hospital garden of St. Mary of Roncesvalles in Charing Cross. But for many centuries peas were primarily an agricultural crop, and didn't feature significantly among garden vegetables. They were also subject to a class divide, young green peas being mostly the reserve of the wealthy, while ordinary people had to make do with the starchy over-mature stuff, or dried peas boiled into soup and pease pudding.

MORE LIKE THIS:

Prolific flower clusters forming on Clementine, a French variety which will have small golden yellow citrusy fruits Burbage's eclipse.—From 18 inches to 2 feet; seed large — from five to six in a pod; blue when ripe. An excellent bearer, having the young pease of a very proper size. Known also as Stubb's dwarf. Not so early as Bishop's new long pod; it is, however, a good dwarf pea for summer crops. 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.