Sowing Sweet Peas (Update)
Sweet Peas are forever in my top five flowers. There is a wide variety of them available to grow, from perennial to biennial and annual. As an annual they will grow from seed, produce flowers, set seed and then die off all in the one year. But they can also be grown be grown as biennials, meaning you sow one year and they will flower the next, set seed and die. They are easy to grow once you understand how they grow, they are highly scented and then repeat flower for months on end. The same plant can give you flowers all summer, you can pick them every couple of days! They don’t last long in a vase, a few days, but they keep producing new flowers so you can compost the spent blooms and pick some more. They can be used as a foliage to if you don’t find cutting harder down the plant, the tendrils add beauty too.
The perennial varieties are numerous and I hope to have some flowering here this year. I have a number on trial, from dwarf to tall and in between, from oranges to greens and pink tones. Some I sowed last year and they should flower this year. I have the perennial variety “White Pearl” in my online shop if you want to give them a try. I find the perennial seeds take longer to germinate and they don’t have the same reach for the skies growth annuals do, so don’t worry if they seem to be very slow in comparison to their annual counterparts! As a rule I never soak my sweet pea seeds but the perennials might benefit from it as they seem to have a harder shell.
When it comes to annuals the most commonly grown ones are those that flower with twelve hours of daylight. The other types I’ll explain a few paragraphs down. The annual summer Sweet peas can be sown in Autumn and overwintered, usually in an unheated greenhouse. The summer Sweet Pea mixes from Bell Meadow are mostly Spencer varieties and can be planted in Autumn or also in January and February indoors, which will give you a long flowering period with long stems, or later planted directly into the soil. Sweet pea seeds are poisonous so be careful around children and pets. They are also the favourite seeds of mice so keep seeds and sown seeds out of reach of mice. I find up on an shelf or a table that has legs too hard to climb for a mouse work a treat. Only today I moved trays down to a polytunnel where they were placed on the ground and I went back down with the torch to move them onto a table, all it takes is one night and the mice could have a feast.
Plant Type: Annual sweet peas mixes
Height: Up to 6 ft tall, or 2metres. This means they will need something to climb up as they grow. This can be anything from hazelnut sticks, or bamboo, wooden posts with string or a pretty climbing frame. I’ve grown a sweet pea wall which is made from netting on simple wooden posts but this is for flower farming. This was since replaced with a very sturdy fence from wood and sheep fence wire. I’ll be building a second area this year outside using the same method as it has proven storm proof so far (not to jinx myself of course!). When I began growing I was sure you needed fancy (read spending more money!) for sweet peas to grow up, but the plants aren’t fussy and as long as there is a something for them to climb up there is no need to buy anything special. If you want to grow them in a teepee style structure and don’t have wooden sticks or poles already then you could add hazel rods or any sticks and garden twine (any string will do!) to a to do list. I’ve cut weed willow as well for growing things up but do double check it doesn’t root and pull out of the ground at the end of the season. In the past I’ve used chicken wire and in the polytunnels I use jute netting that is on its third season and I am very happy with it. Jute netting wouldn’t be suitable for outside as it would move a lot in the wind and I would guess the rain would disintegrate it after a certain length of time, but for polytunnels its great here.
Another way to grow them is using the cordon method. If you grow tomatoes you will be familiar with this one. A lot of seed or exhibition growers will just use this method whereby each individual plant is trailed up a string by itself. I might try a couple this year out of curiosity as I do grow tomatoes here this way.
When to sow: Sept, Oct, Jan, Feb indoors. March, April outdoors. The answer to which month to choose depends on you and your situation! How long you are willing to look after the plant, if you have space to mind them, and how early you want flowers too. The sweet peas require heat to germinate (I pop mine on our floor that has underfloor heating), once germinated, they need to be moved to a cooler area otherwise they’ll get what’s called “leggy”, as they stretch in height looking for the sun. I pop them to my little greenhouse on a high up shelf which is unheated and the rate of growth will be slow and steady. If I didn’t have that cooler space to move them into, I would wait until later, end of February to start them.
The final option then is if you didn’t want the bother of starting them indoors you could sow them directly into the soil in March or April. This does run the risk of mice eating the seeds of course!
Flowers : Potentially May to September depending on how early you sow and that you continue to pick them every few days. If you stop picking flowers it signals to the plant its time to make seed so you will see seed pods starting to form. Sometimes it feels odd to keep picking and have such an abundance of flowers but the more you pick the more you’ll have!
Sowing sweet peas into a root- trainer, this is a seed tray much longer in depth than a standard one.
How to grow: You will need a pot, water, compost and a plant label and pen. Much has been written in books and blogs about soaking sweet peas before planting, the idea is to to help soften the outer shell and speed up germination. Other wisdom suggests it might actually damage seeds. I personally don’t bother soaking them as the seeds are fresh so there should be no problem germinating as long as you water and keep the soil moist. But it is totally up to you if you prefer to soak the seeds! First thing write the name of the seeds on a plant label, you could use a traditional label or even a lollipop stick to write it on. You could add the date to the label or to a notebook.
Sow one seed per individual pot of compost, preferably a tall pot as sweet peas have long root systems. This means that a small seed tray of an inch depth is too small. Think the length of a toilet roll as this is something people often start sowing them in! If using a larger pot then sow 3/5 seeds per pot. You can use toilet rolls if you have no pots, the key is to keep them upright and together so they support each other in not falling over.
You can make holes with your finger or a dribber and pop the seed in about an inch deep and lightly cover with compost and water well and place in an area of warmth. Once it germinates which is usually about seven days then you’ll need to move it somewhere cooler to allow it do establish strong roots and not growth over the soil.
In a month or more time we need to pinch them (if they have not pinched naturally) and start hardening them off to move them outside. You can email me at anytime on bellmeadowireland@gmail.com if you have any questions!
The next steps (if you want to plan ahead of time) are to acclimatise before planting out and pinch out the growing tips when approx. 6in tall to ensure bushier plants. Plant out March to April 6-8in apart. Sweet peas need support, it can be a simple stick/branch and string system or a trellis system. They also need tying up as they grow, a simple string will do! Remember to pick flowers regularly as they bloom as this encourages more flowers.
Since writing this post a couple of years ago, I discovered more types of sweet peas. As it is in my top five and there has been years where you get less months of sweet peas that others, I wanted to research more about having both earlier and later blooms. Would it be possible to succession sow sweet peas? The answer is yes of course especially if you choose different types of sweet peas including those sometimes known as winter or spring sweet peas. Ones that will flower at 10 days daylight or 11. In 2022 I was able to have sweet peas from the end of March and that was so exciting. The beauty of ranunculus and sweet peas together in a bouquet or vase! I’ve been trialing sowing in August, Sept and October this year. These earlier blooming sweet peas are polytunnel grown and not outdoors. I have found the earlier not to be as vigorous as summer ones but I might change my mind on that after this seasons blooms. If you do want to trial earlier ones, I have a selection of these seeds in my web shop also.
sweet pea seeds are poisonous so be careful around children and pets. They are also the favourite seeds of mice so keep seeds and sown seeds out of reach of mice.
Beautiful photos in this post (excuse the one with the pots in my greenhouse! with thanks to Una O’Connor Photography https://uoconnor.com/