We’ve been growing sweet peas for nearly 10 years now, even before we started Single Hill Flowers and we thought it was time to share some of what we’ve learnt over time about them;
They are so so so hardy!
Sweet peas can be over-wintered in the ground without protection up to around -4 degrees celcius, if…. they are in a full sun position. But…they do not like getting flooded out. Although in their early days, they sometimes need watering more than other seedlings, they grow best in exposed higher ground, away from flood-risk areas, where their leaves and stems can dry out during the day on damp winter days after heavy rainfall. We found that when planted in sections of the garden that the sun didn’t hit during the winter months, the leaves and stems couldn’t dry out enough between wet spells and they disintegrated.
You do not need to pre-soak sweet pea seeds before sowing - we have never done this and never had an issue with sweet pea seeds not germinating.
You can consistently get flowers in the last week of May and early June, if you sow sweet pea seeds:
in Autumn outdoors, unprotected. These can be direct sown or sown in pots and transplanted to the ground to live outside all winter
any time in Dec or Jan on an indoor windowsill. Once germinated, these can be moved outside straight away to a cold frame or greenhouse to acclimatise before also being put in the ground as soon as they have a few sets of leaves.
We found that either of these methods produce flowers around the same time in late May-June with the plants ultimately catching up with each other.
Seeds sown in Spring will flower later in the summer.
Sweet peas thrive better if the sun hits both sides of them - we found that our sweet peas grown up a fence or structure that only allowed the sun to hit them from one side resulted in half the number of blooms. Sweet peas can grow in the shade and up through other plants, but this can result in weaker stems with fewer flowers. If you want the maximum number of thick long stems, then the plants need full sun hitting them from both sides and unrestricted by other plants.
Pricking out sweet pea seedlings helps to get more flowers - we have tried pricking out our sweet peas vs. not pricking them out and although we still got very good results in the latter case, we definitely found that pricking them out produces stronger plants with more shoots and more blooms!
Sweet peas sown in spring are never as tall as autumn/winter grown ones - if you want wow factor long stemmed sweet peas then forget waiting until Feb, March, April to sow them. You will still get nice plants and later in the summer, but like all hardy annuals, they just won’t be as good as the over wintered ones!
Happy sweet pea sowing!!
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