How to Grow Sweet Peas
POPLUAR VARIETIES OF SWEET PEA
Alan Titchmarsh - a sweet pea with large soft almond pink to cream flowers
Sweet Pea Black Knight An heirloom variety of sweet pea with deep maroon and violet bicolour flowers.
Butterfly - Another heirloom variety of Sweet Pea thought to have been introduced to the UK in the late 1870's . Has white flowers tinged with lilac.
Spencer Giant - large flowers in mixed colours
Cupid Sweet Peas -dwarf varieties of Sweet Pea growing to about 1 foot high and needing little or no support.
GROWING GUIDES
- Achillea
- Carnation Rust
- Colchicum
- Coreopsis
- Crocus
- Darwin Tulips
- Echinops
- How to Grow Clematis
- Greenhouse Fuchsia
- Growing Lavender
- Hardy Cyclamen
- Hardy Fuchsia
- Hebe
- Hibiscus
- Hippeastrum
- Hollyhock
- Honeysuckle
- Hyacinth
- Hypericum Reptans
- How to Grow Hydrangeas
- Petunia
- Pruning Honeysuckle
- Pruning Shrubs
- Sweet Peas
PLANT SOCIETIES
SWEET PEA (LATHYRUS ODORATA)
Sweet
Peas are popular annuals that can be treated in different ways.
They are easy to grow flowers, with many varieties having a wonderful scent.
Some heirloom varieties of Sweet Pea date back to the sixteenth century.
Sweet Pea is a plant native to the eastern Mediterranean region of Europe from Sicily to Crete.
WHEN TO PLANT SWEET PEA SEEDS
Sweet Peas can either be sown in pots or boxes in a frame or greenhouse in January or February or directly into the open ground in March or April, and in the former instance the seedlings are planted out about 6 inches apart in April or May.
When to sow sweet pea seeds for the best flowers? To obtain the finest flowers Sweet Pea seed is sown by keen gardeners for exhibition in a frame, the seedlings being kept in this until the following April when they are planted out in deeply worked, well manured ground and an open, sunny place.
PLANTING OUT SWEET PEAS
The young sweet pea plants
are planted out spaced 1 foot apart, usually in a double row 1 foot wide,
with a 4 or 5 foot alleyway between this and the next row.
Each Sweet Pea plant is given a tall bamboo cane and is restricted to one stem only, which is regularly tied to the cane.
Sweet Peas can also be grown through trellis and wigwam style supports.
All side growths and tendrils should be removed from the growing Sweet Pea plants.
CARE OF SWEET PEA PLANTS
When the Sweet Pea plant reaches the top of the cane it is untied, laid
along the rows for several feet and then tied to the bottom of another
cane which it can continue to ascend.
This is known as the cordon system.
The natural system is to allow the Sweet Pea plants to grow unchecked and climb into brushy hazel branches stuck into the ground as for sticking culinary peas.
HOW TO KEEP PRODUCING SWEET PEA FLOWERS
To keep a continuous display of Sweet Pea flowers in the gardening keep
picking the flowers. These can be for cut flowers for indoor vases or
simply dead headed.
Either way you don't want the Sweet Pea plants to produce seed pods -
because if Sweet Peas are allowed to go to seed they will stop flowering.
SWEET PEA SEEDS ARE POISONOUS
It is important to be aware that Sweet Pea seeds are toxic
GARDENING ADVICE ARTICLES ON GARDEN GROWER
How to Grow Sweet Peas, When to Plant, When to sow Sweet Pea seeds, How to keep Sweet Peas Flowering