Sweet Peas

[Smartie]

Hi all,
I only recently moved into my first flat with a garden, so am new to this whole gardening and growing my own fruit and veg scene. I was just wondering if anyone could tell me if I've completely missed the boat from planting out some sweet peas. I fear I'll have to wait till next year....
Thanks

[dragonz]

you could plant the seeds indoors or in a greenhouse and have some nice healthy seedling to plant out in early spring, you will probably need to protect them from frost until may but you sould have some early flowers

[flourpower]

Probably a stupid question but... as a point of interest, do you have to stake sweet peas from the off?

[nick the grief]

Hi flourpower,

My sister grow hers is tubs on the patio, get yourself some bigish one from your local pound shop along with some 6' canes they'll soon be up there. I f you don't mind paying a bit extra some of the seed catalogues & garden centre's offer sweetpeas as seedilgs so you'll soon catch up with the keen folk how sowed therres last autumn. Just keep picking and waterinng and you'll be sick of them by the end of the summer :-)

[Patsy]

If you look round the garden centres in a while you''ll find that they nearly all sell sweet peas ready started in a small pot ready for growing on up canes in your garden. There's usually enough in one pot to do a tubful and they're very cheap. Then you can enjoy the beautiful scent this year and start your own from a packet of seed in the autumn. Just remember when they start to flower keep cutting them regularly to make them flower on all summer. Enjoy!

[Hardy]

could you sow them now?

Hi

I thought I'd read somewhere that you could also sow them now for an early start? (i mean indoors of course.) Did I just imagine it? I guess the main problem might be light levels.

Thanks

[Jaxom]

You can still sow sweet peas in January.
Jax

[nick the grief]

Something else to remember with swet peas. They pollenate themselves before the flower is fully open, so if you have some that are particularly good colours or scents, you can save the seed.

Just let the flower go over and when the pods are nice & brown shuck the "peas" into a dish (or dishes if you want to keep colours seperate) and pop them in an envelope -don't forget to write on it what they are.

You can mark the flowers you want to keep with some wool tied around the stem so you can see them in amongst the tangle .

[Shortie]

What's the harm in trying?

Hi Smartie

I must be the least organised person ever, and last year we moved into a new home in the February. In march I finally got round to planting sweet pea seeds in propogators, and they proceeded to get get covered in dust from redecorating (the propogators, that is)... They survived and produced tonnes of flowers, even after I had to put chicken wire over them after my cats tried to dig them up!

Anyway, the long and short of it is that, (although I am far from an accomplished gardener ) if you don't mind the risk of losing a few seeds, give it a try, you might be surprised.

Shortie

[sewer rat]

Sweet Peas

Hi all
Was just reading my local county newspaper before logging on and in the gardening column (with the jazzy title "Gardening in Ross-shire"!!), the author states that Feb 28th is the date to sow sweet peas up here - sow 5 seeds to a 5 inch pot containing John Innes No 1 soil based compost.
Cheers
Rat

[Lesley Jay]

We have a frame along the side of the greenhouse and each year grow sweet peas up the side of the greenhouse. It looks really pretty, smells beautiful and disguises the greenhouse.

[Jaxom]

I would think that it also helps shade the greenhouse at the hottest parts of the day as well
Jax

[andrewo]

Accidental sweetpeas

A few years back, I was planting sweetpeas on a table outside and with the usual ham fisted ability to open a seed packet (do they need to make it so difficult?), I tore open the packet and the seed went everywhere. I thought I'd got most of it but surprise surprise I had a few pop up in the most unusual places, one grew out of the crack in the path! So, just goes to show that they may have a frail start but they hard as nails once they get going.

Andrewo

[sparkyaj]

can I add a question to this...............Is it possible to plant sweet P's up a runner bean cane and later in the year plant the runners to climb aswell or is that a complete night mere??

Thanks.......Just thought it would look nice, and I could set the bean canes up earlier

thanks again

sparkyaj@hotmail.com

[Jaxom]

I will be planting Sweet peas among my Runner beans, French beans and Sugar-snap peas, this year. The reason for this is twofold.
1 they look and smell wonderful.
2 they will attract the bees to my beans so they get pollinated.
Jax