All change with the sweet peas

October. A chill in the air. A wondering about lighting the fire. Back to muddy paws. Porridge.

 Ah, it must be sweet pea sowing time.

 First, I want you to know that if you are busy, and I feel rather stretched thin at the moment, what with life and renovations and lots of plates etc, this is not your only chance.

 This is a chance, and there will be plenty of others. Indeed, my favourite time for sowing is with a hangover on Boxing Day; whether or not this is the best time for sweet peas is immaterial.

A few things I am shaking up this year, having learned from a few mistakes, having seemingly bred a population explosion of slugs, and having recently read Roger Parson’s seminal tome on sweet peas. I am doing things a little differently this time round.

I am using root trainers

Of course, I try and avoid plastic wherever I can. I do manage to save up enough loo roll inners to sow almost enough sweet peas for the field, but I did an inadvertent side by side trial last year (I’d run out of cardboard options and someone gifted me some beautiful root trainers) and the ones in plastic looked so much happier, so much stronger, and just generally had a much better start in life. As with all plastics, store clean and out of direct sunlight, buy quality, and you should be able to reuse and reuse.

I have two size options because the ones gifted are in fact for taking tree cuttings. I think they will be brilliant for the long period of growth from October to March (when I plant out into the ground) although Mr Parsons says, rather cuttingly, that these larger ones are ‘simply a waste of growing medium’.

I am covering them

I banged on about the mantra ‘start warm, grow cold’ last year until everyone must have been utterly sick of it. But sweet peas care more than most about this because the cold is absolutely key to get the roots going, and also to ‘stop’ the main shoot and encourage branching. You won’t see much going on at the top, but the eventual health of the plant will depend hugely on the network of roots that you get going in the winter.

A sheltered corner in most gardens (they are happy enough down to -5) is perfect. However, my sheltered corners are full of great big fat slugs and if I lose one more precious living thing to the teeth of a mollusc, I will be sorely tempted to turf over the field and take up some other all-consuming activity entirely.

The root trainers come with plastic lids. I will be using them. I will have to take the risk that they will keep the plants a bit warm.

I will be sowing the split ones

When I buy in sweet peas, they always add a bit extra if there is a high proportion of split ones. I rarely have any split in my home-produced seed, and when I pack packets on for you, I tend to pick them out, because I assumed they were just dud. However, Mr Parsons says that these are fine, they just are a little more prone to damping off. I don’t get much of that (the key is to water once, very thoroughly and then not drown them after that)

I am not watering with rainwater

There are so many logical reasons why watering with tap water should be a terrible idea. Everything about plant health and growth can be understood from the perspective of the microbiome, a sensitive and beautiful balance of fungi and bacteria, all working in harmony to boost a plant into life. Tap water contains chlorine, because having mains water full of interesting and enthusiastic bacteria doesn’t work for human beings; we’d all get cholera. It stands to reason that watering plants with chlorinated water will kill off all the important life forms.

So this time last year, I collected rain water in buckets and trays. Thatched cottages don’t have gutters, but they do have hips and valleys so there is always one point where the water pours off. I will, of course, continue to harvest this for general watering (not that I do much of that, only containers really) but I think it led to lots of damping off last year.  I was disproportionately upset by this; I thought I’d done the right and wholesome thing, and it didn’t entirely go to plan.

I am trying cuttings

I played with this a little bit last year, with mixed results. However, Mr P says that sweet peas not ‘stopping’ (sending out side shoots rather than one big stem) is caused by being too warm over winter, and these ones will need pinching out What you pinch out is one perfect leader stem with lots of potential for being a plant of its own. I have absolute buckets of seeds for most of my favourite sweet peas that I am going to grow on for the Gather shop next year, but there are two in short supply (Indigo King and Suzy Z). I will sow every single seed I have, and then try cuttings in March to try and double to number of plants I can use for seed. Suzy Z was one of my favourites this year, but I grew it in the kitchen garden, whose soil is less well suited to sweet peas, and it grew limp and was covered in aphids. Luckily, I have just enough to start again.

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This might be the moment to announce that I think the seed shop is going to be more sweet pea next year than anything else. I have just adored growing them and saving the seed this year, and I think I might have found my flower seed niche.

Until then, the current shop is stuffed to the gills with sweet peas for October sowing or (sharp intake of breath) Christmas presents.