Sweet Pea Seedlings

How Sweet Pea seedlings should roughly look: green, leafy and lustrous

How Sweet Peas definitely shouldn't look: long, leggy and limp.  Oh the alliteration! Don't be tempted to grow them indoors.. so doesn't work

Ah sweet Peas, the mainstay of the amateur garden; prolific flowerer, easy to grow and a perpetual thorn in my side.  Sweet Peas are another cucumber in my life, if you get what I mean.  I just don’t appear to have the knack if there is one and I find it very frustrating to say the least.

This tale begins two years ago when being a bit of a seed snob I purchased a multi pack of seeds from a specialist grower at Hampton Court.  No common garden centre fare for me, no no.  Im not buying seedlings either; Im of the opinion that if you can’t grow at least these from seed your not much of a gardener.  The packet may have said ‘sow in October’ but I chose to ignore this on the grounds that not having a greenhouse I couldn’t quite see what id do with them over winter.  Plus Monty Don categorically said there was no need to plant before spring and personally, Id trust the man with my life.  So Spring rolls round and im out there sowing my seeds and then I sit back and wait.... and continue to wait.... and finally disappointment pops up out of my seed tray.  I can’t remember specific numbers but I must have planted like 35 seeds and I got 8 seedlings.  Wow... that was some flower display I can tell you.  Now I know you can’t rely on seeds to actually perform their only purpose in life and germinate, but I do expect better returns than that.  It was shockingly cold last year right up till May time but again the packet claims ‘no heat is required to germinate’ or something along those lines, still trying to convince you to go for October so there really is no excuse.  The growers I bought the seed from were at Chelsea last year and infuriatingly, all theirs had grown.  I inquired after my lack of success to be told in a way that had an air of being looked down a nose at that I should have sown in October.  So I heeded their advice, listened to the experts, came home and stuffed some more in thinking sod this, I will have peas!  I did get a few more but I would hardly say I was inundated.  Not like my neighbour who unintentionally rubbed my nose in my dismal crop by going in for them in a big way and virtually having them coming out of his ears.  This year I was determined not to be outdone and had those seeds planted in March indoors and some outdoors for good measure.  Of course all the indoor ones shot up and became ridiculously leggy as shown in the picture.  Yes I did know this would happen but I hoped to get them out before they got too carried away, but alas they got away from me.  I used the aforementioned grow tubes for these and to be honest, I would recommend neither tubes nor trying to start seedlings indoors.  Big mistake.  I managed to salvage a few by cutting them down to the lowest growing point and letting them re-sprout but most just gave up the will.  Luckily I also bunged a few in a segmented tray on the patio and some of these sprouted fine so I should actually have a decent-ish crop this year.  Annoyingly my neighbour still beat me getting them into pots and has about three times as many, although I doubt he sows them himself.  And unless my eyes deceive me he actually has flowers already.  Some people make themselves really hate-able.