Starting the season with sweet peas

It’s too early to really start thinking about sowing seeds but one thing I will be doing this month is sweet peas.

Many people sow in the autumn as it produces earlier flowers. I find it’s a job too many at a busy time of year so always leave it until now. It’s also one less thing for me to keep going over the winter when space is tight in the greenhouse, potting shed and cold frame.

I’ll be starting the seeds off in the heated propagator – a bit of heat stops the seeds sitting in cold, damp soil for too long and the propagator is a bit of protection from the garden’s mice.

Sweet peas have a long root run so something deep is best. You can use the inner cardboard tube from loo rolls or make pots from newspaper. However, they won’t be going out into the ground for some weeks and I’ve found those to be fine in the short-term but they tend to fall apart eventually. So, I’ll be using RootTrainers. They may be plastic, which I’m trying to avoid, but I’ve had them for years and keep reusing them.

Last year was a bumper season for sweet peas in my garden. Unbelievably, I was still picking flowers in October.

The damp summer undoubtedly helped but I also prepared the soil well before planting, adding newspaper and a generous helping of coir-based, peat-free compost, which I was given to trial by FertileFibre. I very much doubt my thin, sandy soil would have produced the same results without those additions.

I trialled several varieties of sweet peas last year and discovered some beauties.

One of my favourites ‘Balcony Mix’ from Mr Fothergill’s. Unlike my usual tall sweet peas, it is shorter and ideal for containers. I grew it in a pot on the patio where we could see the rather beautifully marked flowers.

‘Nimbus’ from Chiltern Seeds was another with delicately marked petals, while ‘Blue Shift’, also from Chiltern, was, like many so-called ‘blue’ flowers more purple in colour. That said, I really liked it and will be growing it again this year.

‘Gwendoline’ (Chiltern Seeds) was chosen because of the name, which goes back in family history. It turned out to be a robust plant with pretty pink flowers.

‘Pink Champagne’, also from Chiltern, gave flowers in shades of pink, which is a good option, if you want a mix but don’t want to sow more than one packet.

The same idea but with a wider range of colours came in ‘T&M Prize Strain Mixed’ from Thompson & Morgan, with pink, purple and white flowers.

I’m hoping to sow more new varieties this year. Fingers crossed for another long season of blooms.

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