The reason I do sweet peas for Christmas is because you really can sow them on Boxing Day. If you have over-indulged, then a few hours with your hands in soil are likely to be just the thing. Yes I know, the light levels are a bit low and you will probably need to keep them warm, but I will take heart-warming, sanity-restoring, gloriously-grounding seed-sowing over horticultural perfection and exactitude any day of the SAD inducing winter.

You will need:

·    Peat free compost. Not the seed compost, just a good multi-purpose will do

·    Cardboard inners or, if you must, plastic root trainers

·    A container to hold the inners, one of those plastic trays that mushrooms come in is perfect

·    Labels

·    Seed 

I used to say soak and I know many people will be reluctant to let go of this because it intuitively feels like a good idea, but Roger Parsons of Roger Parsons sweet peas says, in bold, to not. Owl’s Acre says to follow Floret’s growing guides, and she does.  Johnson’s don’t mention it either way.

Fill your pots with good quality compost. Sweet peas produce tap roots, so they do need a bit of depth underneath them. I do find the easiest way to do it is to fill the tubes almost to the top, lay the seeds on the top of the compost and then sprinkle the last bit over the top. You will probably find out sooner or later so I may as well tell you, it is remarkably fiddly to fill the tubes and compost does tend to go everywhere. You can either put the tubes in the container and try and fill them in situ (this does mean you get a lot of compost in between but that’s not a bad thing, the roots are likely to come through the cardboard before you come to plant them out) or put the tube into the bag of compost and fill it there, keeping a hand over one end.

I always used to say sow two seeds per tube because most sweet peas germinate at around 65%. However, my seed has proven to be so good, I think I am going to say one seed for each tube. Sweet peas do like space and I am never going to thin out a perfectly healthy sweet pea seedling. I am just not that person. It is important to make sure the seed is not buried too deep. I find dibbing with a pencil and dropping the seed in is incredible satisfying, but it is hard to keep track of the depth. Filling with compost to very nearly the top and then adding the seed and covering is safer in terms of knowing how deep they are, but also doesn’t compact the compost.

Label. Label each of the tubes unless every single tube in the container is the same variety. I know, I have tried to get around this will saying that ‘from this row is Jilly’, or ‘this is half Nimbus and half Burnished Bronze’.  I promise you that when spring arrives, all this means is that you have a lot of unlabelled plants.

Water very gently with a rose. When I say gently, the water will bounce out of the container and splash everywhere, particularly when the compost is dry. Do it in a sink or outside. I haven’t found a way of doing this without water spurting off in strange directions so I just accept that it will and take precautions. The first water should be quite a comprehensive one as it takes the place of the soaking step that we have missed out (if you have) and there needs to be enough moisture in the compost to soften the seed coating.

The mantra to remember for most seeds, but particularly sweet peas, is warm and dark for germination, cool and light for growing on. I know this picture is of my sweet peas on my Everhot but I am just showing off really, it is too warm to leave them there for too long (Everhots are not as hot as Agas on top, if you put them on top of an Aga they would cook within an hour). Around 10 degrees Celsius is about right according to the experts but I think a kitchen windowsill, or any place out of a draft indoors, is fine.

One of the most important reasons for doing this indoors is that (hopefully) you don’t have mice inside the house and mice love sweet pea seeds. They will generally ignore plants so once they are up and growing, they are fine.

Keep them moist but not wet. Once the shoots are up and through, get them out in the cold. If you molly coddle them, you get weak, leggy plants. Don’t worry if they grow tall and start sprawling all over the place, that’s fine. Worry of the leaves look a bit yellow (they have run out of nutrients in the compost so they need potting up) or if the distance between the leaves looks disproportionately long (this means they have got leggy, I’d put them somewhere cooler or with more light).