Hello,

I’m getting a few questions at the moment regarding how to plant sweet pea seeds.

Here are my tips:

Sweet Peas are heavy feeders. Think about it. A tiny sweet pea seed grows into a 2.5 metre tall vine with a profusion of tendrils, leaves, stems and beautiful flowers within 3-4 months!  On the Veggie and Flower Garden seeds website the sweet pea growing guide states from seed to harvest is 90 days.  Sweet Peas need their food and water to grow that fast that quickly!

I plant seeds in the best quality organic potting mix I can afford. (Not seed starting mix).

Michael puts the potting mix into the seed trays, waters the potting mix, lets the water drain out through the bottom holes, puts the cell tray into a drip tray. (A drip tray is a tray with no holes that catches excess water when watering.)

Only then do I plant the seeds into the potting mix. The potting mix is damp not soaking wet because the water has been let drain through.

I don’t soak the sweet pea seeds like some people recommend. I have only soaked sweet pea seeds once, I forgot them and found them days later, they were definitely no use to anyone by that stage. So, I had to buy new seeds and have never done it since. Dr Keith Hammett, the New Zealand sweet pea breeder does not recommend soaking sweet pea seeds before planting. He writes about it on his website.

I plant two seeds per pot/cell. For me, I have found that Sweet Peas are social plants, they like company, they reach out to say hello to each other, using their tendrils to hold on tight to each other.

I don’t use toilet rolls. Read my next blog post for the reasons. The blog post is called ‘I don’t recommend planting sweet pea seeds in toilet rolls.’

Use pots/cell trays that are at least 5cm wide by 8cm deep. Use that drip tray as well.

Start your seeds indoors or in a Hot House. Mice like sweet pea seeds and will dig them up to eat them. Blackbirds like a good forage in freshly tended soil and you don’t want them digging up your seeds. We start all our sweet peas on our enclosed front veranda.

Growing your seedlings indoors is an extra layer of insurance and protection. Plus, indoors is easier to do slug patrol.

Plant your sweet pea seedlings out into the garden as soon the plants are established and not root bound. They should be a lush green colour.

A good indicator is lifting up your pots and if you see the roots starting to go through the bottom holes, that’s your indicator to plant them outside. If the foliage is starting to slightly turn pale and they are root bound get them in the ground asap and give them a seaweed liquid feed. The liquid feed will give them a boost and get them quickly back on track.

Some people swear by hardening off seedlings, try to do it. Hardening off is when you take seedlings started indoors and put them outside  during the day and take them in over night for approx. 3-5 days to get them use to the weather before planting them directly into the ground. That is ideal but I don’t usually have Michael or Lil around to take the trays in and outside for me five days in a row. I leave the windows open longer when I am nearly ready to plant out the seedlings. Michael plants the seedlings for me due to my hand injury, we leave the seedlings outside during the day on the Saturday, take them inside Saturday night, take them back outside on the Sunday and plant them sometime during the day.

These are the things that help me the most, and I hope that they help you too! If you have been following me for any length of time you’ve probably read that it has taken 12 years of trial and error and it wouldn’t have been possible without other gardeners sharing generously.

Erin Benzakein at floret has a great Library full of Sweet Pea information on the Floret website. https://library.floretflowers.com/collections/sweet-peas

It was seeing Sarah Raven in Country Living UK magazine standing amongst rows of sweet peas that inspired me all those years ago to dream of one day having a sweet pea garden. sarahraven.com has a wealth of sweet pea information.

Dr Keith Hammet’s website is https://www.drkeithhammett.co.nz

Happy Sweet Pea Gardening,

Jude x