Sweet Pea varieties: Sutton Seeds

All my indoor bulbs have been and gone, all my outdoor bulbs are only just emerging and my sweet peas don't look vastly different to the last time I covered them.  That, by the way, is a good thing.  I pinched the growing tip out after the first pairs of leaves appeared and its had the desired effect and really slowed them all down. So lets instead turn to what my sweet peas will hopefully become if they manage to sweat out my warm garage.

My previous sweet peas I bought at Hampton Court flower show because I presumed that if you got your seeds from a specialist grower you would be off to a solid start.  Lovely theory that.  Instead half of them didn't germinate and I managed to kill most of the others.  While I can't blame killing them on the seeds, I can blame non-germination.  It became apparent when they flowered that out of a packet of about nine varieties I only actually had four different colours.  Five were complete no-shows.   I can't say I was terribly impressed.

This year I have predominantly shunned the specialist grower and gone back to slumming it with garden centre varieties.  Im fine with a lower brow kind of variety if it means they actually come up, give me a workhorse over a fancy-pants thoroughbred any day if that thoroughbred has no plans to come out of the soil.  Thats what I call wasting money.  I have always been a bit of a snob when it comes to sweat peas sold in garden centres but having thoroughly browsed a few different brands' stocks I have actually been quite impressed at their offerings.  This should be evident by the number I have bought.

The good bit about buying my seed from a specialist grower was that I bought I variety pack that somebody had spent hopefully a decent amount of time considering and collating to give a rounded display.  I have done no such thing.  Instead I lost my head a bit with the freedom, bought far too many varieties and with no thought to any kind of colour scheme.  I know sweet peas are meant to be an assortment of colours, but Im pretty sure other people choose like one blue, one white, one red etc. which I do have, so maybe its not as bad as I think.

I bought what I liked, and I liked a lot.  My seeds come from three sources I believe, and I will include pictures if the packet has kindly provided one.  Today I will go through the first four.

The slight sheen on the packets has made this look terribly out of focus, my apologies.  In fact the lights terrible altogether.  The sun was going down and its always dark and miserable. However, does that not look like a white flower on the right? Right: Albutt Blue. Left: Fragrant Skies

Suttons: Absolutely no idea where I got these from, a garden centre here or there Im sure.  All of Sutton varieties are described as 'climbers'.  I wasn't aware there was any other type of sweet pea but there we are.  Prince of Orange is new, with a 'delicate scent', which I interpret to mean its not much of a whiffer.  The others are 'high scent', so should be fairly smelly.  Albutt Blue is good for showing apparently, which is only a good thing in my book if by show it means 'show it to a vase'.

Albutt Blue- These are described as 'pale blue blooms with picotee edge' which is surprising because I bought this variety on the strength of the picture on the front which clearly shows a white flower with a dark, almost navy blue, edge.  Thats what picotee means apparently, a flower with a different coloured edge to the petal, I googled it.  So either their picture is lying or whoever wrote the blurb did a bad job. Im hoping its the second option because if it does look like the picture it will be pretty.

Fragrant Skies- A 'navy/violet bicolour'.  Again picture mainly just shows it as being blue, a really intense incredible blue, but just blue.

Prince of Orange- Unhelpfully doesn't include a description so Sutton must think the picture speaks for itself.  One of my favourites, its a bicolour of orange and pink.  I liked it so much I nearly bought it twice.

Juanita- Is oh so pink. This 'bicolour heritage variety' is a mixture of different shock-it-to-you pinks.

Left: Prince of Orange. Right: Juanita