ET Weymouth, Mass. In All America Selections AAS announced that it had uncovered a surefire winner among new vegetables - an edible podded pea that could be grown to maturity and still be eaten, pod and all. Everyone loved the pea that was as sweet as sugar even when overly mature and could be eaten either raw or cooked.
Yet, it did have one great disadvantage: A tough string down the spine of the pod had to be removed before eating. It also grew taller six feet than most growers prefer. Now Gallatin Valley Seed Company, developer of the original Sugar Snap and all the shorter varieties that followed, has licked that early problem.
Sugar Daddy, as the new variety has been named, is, with rare exceptions, as free of strings as the best stringless bean. The exception comes if unusually cool weather prevails when the pods form. In such situations a partial string sometimes forms down the spine of the pod. Another plus for the plant: It grows only a little more than two feet tall. Sugar Daddy will be made available to home gardeners through commercial seed companies in the spring.
An ''ample supply of seeds,'' to quote a spokesmen for Gallatin, is available for the coming season. Seed samples of Sugar Daddy were sent to selected growers throughout much of the United States and Canada for wide-ranging trials earlier this year.
The response to Research No. SP, as the seeds were simply named, was an almost unbroken string of rave reviews. That irritating, tough string had finally been removed without compromising other qualities. It couldn't help but score. The stringless pods of Sugar Daddy are somewhat more slender and darker than those of Sugar Snap. The to inch vines produce double pods at each fruiting zone near the top of the plant.
