A superb sweet pea season

Despite not giving a thought to the overall colour scheme, I thought
the overall effect of my haphazard buying was really pretty

This year I really went for the sweet peas.  Every year I have a competition with my neighbour as to who can get sweet peas to flower first (he doesn't know he is involved in this competition). This year I won, and I am so smug about it.  He still grew far more overall but he gives over half his garden to them while I just have a couple of pots.  Last time I talked sweet peas they were just about blooming, see here.

Bright zingy colours are always a welcome sight, although this was not
luminous in real life 

I had a continuous bountiful supply right from June until the end of August, and thats not bad I think.  Last weekend I pulled out the first plant to bloom because it had finally given up flowering, and to be honest with you im quite glad.  They sure are pretty, but boy are they are a lot of work.  In full heavy flower I was spending a good twenty minutes out there every evening cutting them, but thats just stage one.  Then comes the long arduous task of checking through all the blooms picked in the last couple of days for dead and dying ones before adding in the new ones.  The problem is sweet peas are just so messy.  The moment you touch a slightly ageing one it completely collapses and then theres pollen all over the worktops and petals are swimming around in the sink.  Im not complaining, but I think I need the next eight months off to really look forward to next year's batch again.

The average daily pick near the end of the season

My aim every year is to have sweet peas coming out of my ears and have enough to give away down the street.  Well I didn't quite manage that because I staggered my sowings so I only ever had two pots flowering at the same time. I did manage to fill four vases at once though, the kitchen windowsill absolutely stuffed.  I like them in the kitchen, it really brightens up the washing-up.

A particularly bright pink arrangement, barry dare is one of my top picks for
the year, its fabulous

I didn't put chicken-wire around the bottom of the pots or netting round the canes, and my peas were just fine.  Yes a little unruly, but thats my style so thats not a bother.  So much easier than trying to fight with the net to even get to the flowers.

I let my peas grow free and uncaged this year, it it worked perfectly well
safe to say I wont be faffing around with chicken wire or netting in the future!

I thought having one pot flower so late was a mistake but its nice to still have long stemmed flowers to help add a little height to a vase when you get to that annoying stage later in a sweet peas life when you only have an inch of stem to try and work with.  I really hate this part.  I thought it was something I was doing wrong, but a little internet research revealed this to just be a sign the plant is getting older.  I wish it wouldn't, you just can't arrange an inch in any attractive meaningful way.

This clearly shows the shortening of the stem as the season progresses, the long ones are from my last sowings, while the short ones at the bottom are much older.  How you're meant to do anything with the short ones I don't know

So on to the actual colours.  Some have really wowed me, others were underwhelming and some have just been plane missing.  But overall I was very pleased that my haphazard buying led to a very pleasing colour scheme.  It turns out really dark coloured flowers are simply beautiful, two very late additions were the absolute highlight for me.  Ones that promise to change colour are really not worth it, and pink ones are super pretty.  If I was a more organised person I would be able to go through every variety I planted with a corresponding picture, but I am not that person.  I did not label a thing. Instead in another upcoming post I will just run through the ones I can identify and are worth it, or not.

Im really fond of these bright pinky red ones

Sweet peas - flowering time

Solid growth, I have tried to tame the unruly mess that peas always become
but there is only so much one can do

Last time I talked sweet peas was at the beginning of May when I was undertaking my least favourite stage - the planting out.  Its a lot of pot to fill and as we also had to perform a pot eviction, time consuming and labour intensive.  But that task done all that is left to do is plenty of watering, and sit back and wait for flowers.

The first bud, took ages to come to fruition 

Seeing that first flower bud forming is one of the best thrills of the early summer as far as im concerned.  What has added to that thrill is that my first bud formed ahead of my neighbour. I have mentioned before that the neighbour and I are in sweet pea competition.  He's not aware of this, but its happening. Being eighty-something and retired, I consider him at an unfair advantage, in both time and experience, so I was made up to peer through the fence and see his bushes bare while mine was just beginning to be spotted with colour.

Lots of flowers ready for cutting, everything seems to have a touch of white to it

Of course now he has steamed ahead, his seven pots and half a flower bed-full producing far more than they could possibly find vase room for, makes you wonder what on earth they do with them all.  But im doing all right.  That first bud appeared around the twentieth of May.  I thought it would be out within a few days, but turns out when your intently watching the one bud, it takes ages.  About eight days later it finally popped out, by which time my patience was gone.

A good barry dare, shock it to you pink

My first pot is doing me proud, producing new flowers every day and ensuring a steady stream for my kitchen windowsill. My second pot is just beginning to crank up a gear and pull its weight as well, which is great because the colours are different and add a bit more variety.  The third pot is still to come, but when thats up and running as well, I think my might achieve my dream of sweet peas from the ears.  I wont be happy until I am giving them away in the street.  Im already wishing I had sowed more seed, even though they are a total pain to plant out.  I went to a garden at the weekend with tonnes of sweet pea plants smothered in flowers, and it has totally put my meager supply in perspective.  More is so more when it comes to sweet peas.

A flirty pale pink

While I don't think any sweet pea variety can exactly be described as manly, I really have gone for an exceptionally girly palette, all pinks and reds, but considering I just bought random packets and threw them together rather than buying a collection, im rather pleased.  I will do a brief run-down of all my varieties over the coming weeks as its always nice to see pictures, real pictures rather than the advertising ones.  The only question is, where are my two orange varieties?!

Seat Pea update - planting out

Three pots of seedlings from my third batch, I need to get my hands on another pot soon to put them in!

I am so on the sweet peas this year.  If you have read my previous posts on the popular flowering pea, you may be aware of my long-standing jealousy of my neighbour's bountiful supply, and my complete inadequacy at growing my own.  But not this year.  Experience, pre-planning and the weather means I have not one, but two large pots of sweat peas getting increasingly closer to providing me with a bountiful supply all summer long.

I started early with my first sowing just before christmas.  Pre-soaking the seeds and using the garage resulted in almost a full house of germination without leggy-ness.  Yes the seedlings were perhaps slightly taller than one might like, but totally workable.  I picked out growing tips and moved them into my coldframe as soon as possible.  Nothing died at this point - hurrah! and I was able to pot them on merely two weeks after my infuriating neighbour did his.

Look at all that bush! Such strong and luscious growth, a vision of sweet pea
success, I couldn't want anything more

If you want to compare and contrast last years apologies with this year's strapping lads I would click here  What a difference.  Im slightly embarrassed thats all I managed last year, but everybody has to start somewhere. The key differences I feel are - don't germinate in a warm house, and don't use compostable tubes unless you want a house that smells of mould.

My first pot of peas, they really are getting established now and have started
putting on some serious growth and thickening up

There was also an issue with pots last year as I had to wait for the daffodils and spring pot to be over to plant them up.  Not this year.  The great fuchsia purge of 2015 freed up a nice big pot so I planted out my first batch the third week of March.  They are going great guns, bushing up and producing nice thick stems.  I am trying to keep order and train them to their allocated canes but they are always growing behind my back and intermingling, sneaky things.

My second pot of peas, a little behind the first pot but still doing pretty well
I haven't restrained these seedlings yet, but their time is coming

I got started on my second batch pretty much as soon as I moved the first outside which freed up room in the garage.  Exactly the same method as before with equally as good results, only I shifted them outside virtually the moment their noses poked through.  I figured this was the best way to avoid legginess and keep things moving on the window shelf.  Here is where I hit a slight snag though, as my second seedlings were coming on a pace and I was fresh out of large pots.  My eyes hit upon an old pot of the mothers, crammed full of random bushes and mini versions of things in the garden that she couldn't resist trying to make a cutting from.  It was an eyesore if Im honest, which I generally am.  Prime candidate for being emptied I thought.  Luckily the mother agreed.  Problem solved I thought.  Oh problem not solved!  Problem only just begun.  Could we get the contents of the pot out?  No we couldn't.  The father and I yanked, and pulled and held it upside down and shook, we chiselled and levered, and still it would not free.  Somebody needed to get in there with some butter and grease proceedings up.  There was also a small tree and a rose in the pot that the mother was keen to plant into the garden so we couldn't get to rough with them.  Two hours it took, by which time the old man was pouring with sweat and knackered.  But totally worth it as empty pot for me!

The pot that just wouldn't give up its contents! It was a hell of a struggle
but eventually we got it out

I have taken a different approach to planting up this year.  The neighbour wraps his in netting so they have something to climb up, and puts a collar of chicken wire round the bottom to keep out the pests.  Last year I did both.  This year I have done neither.  I just didn't get the netting, the peas didn't really climb up it and it made a netty prison around them meaning I struggled to get at the flowers to cut them.  Im not sure what pests the chicken wire is for, but I have taken my chances, and all is good.

Sweat peas is a numbers game as far as I am concerned, so I have sown another two batches.  Both contained fewer seeds than the first two but as I have said before, it would be nice to have them literally coming out of my ears, and for that you need a lot of plants.  I would say at least 35-40 plants with a few more to come up from my last batch.  I can't promise I wont sow anymore, but I might be done for this year.  I can't even compare to me neighbour's ridiculous crop, he has a full seven pots, so depending how bad my jealousy gets, I may sow more.

My week in sowing 7 - Broad Beans, Cucumbers, Zinnia

With longer nights and warmer weather I really feel like some serious progress is being made against my long long list of things to do.  That being said I spent a good half hour wandering around the garden Saturday morning, feeling a bit overwhelmed and at a loss as to what to do first.  The weeds in my veg bed are breeding before my very eyes, and with my broad beans keen to go in soon, thats my task for the week ahead.  I am so behind with this post, normally I like to get it up every Wednesday but last week was more than faintly trying so Im only just catching up!

Broad Beans - Masterpiece Green Longpod.  I read somewhere that now is the last chance to sow broad beans, so panicked, rushed home and threw some more in.  Im not sure thats technically true anyway, but it does appear that planting them earlier makes them less susceptible to disease, and as I had a terrible case of rust last year, that would be no bad thing.  I have sown a batch of 15 beans of last year's variety.  As its the same packet I used last year, technically they are all out of date.  Hopefully they wont realise and I will get at least a few to add a little variety to my broad bean crop for the year.

My first batch of broad beans.  I love growing these, the seedlings always come up so lush and eager, if you know what I mean

Cucumbers - After a few weeks of letting my cucumber seeds get on with it I have decided I am only going to get one, maybe two, out of my first batch and its time to move on and get on with planting the second batch.  My louisa seedling quite literally gave up the ghost last week when I gave it a little prod, so I have sown two of that one, and one of my other four varieties.  I just don't understand why cucumbers appear to be so difficult to grow!  I do however have one seedling beauty which is just producing its first true leaf.  Im trying not to get too attached, it could still all end in tears.  The six new pots are lined up on my bedroom windowsill so I will be able to keep my beady eye on them!

My first proper cucumber seedling grown from seed! I don't know why this is so hard but I am so proud

Zinnia - Purple Prince.  Having decided my last zinnia sowings could not be spoilt by being germinated in their own individual bags and would have to slum it withe everything else on the garage windowsill, I was thrilled to find one pop up in every pot very quickly.  Then I waited for others to join them.  It would have been a very long wait.  In re-reading an old post it turns out I treated them to their own pots by only sowing one seed in each.  This is where having a blog comes in handy!  My first batch of a different variety are now out in my cold frame and and I am on to the next variety, Purple Prince.  I sowed four, one per pot, in seed compost, in the garage.

One of my new zinnia seedlings, comfy in a room all to itself

Cosmos - Double click rose bonbon. Five of my first batch popped up so fast I couldn't leave the bag on to wait for the rest.  Nothing else has come up so I have sown another batch.  These are such good do-ers in the summer so I want plenty of plants to keep my vases full.  I sowed about seven seeds on seed compost covered in vermiculite, in a bag, on my bedroom windowsill.

Sweet Peas - Yep been at it again.  I probably have enough already, but I look across at the neighbours excessive seven pots, feel a pang of jealousy and throw a few more in.  Im not even sure what I have sown this time, I just collected six seeds and bunged them in pots.  The lack of care is definitely because I don't really need them.  If they grow then great, but if not, oh well! These better not grow too fast as I have absolutely nothing to put them in until all the daffodils are over.

Lots of my previous sowings have popped up and moved on, but I think I will start talking about them separately in their own posts, or its all a bit much I think.

My week in sowing 5 - Seedling success

I haven't taken any pictures of my seedlings because lets face it, they are
not exactly at a visually stimulating stage and one seedling looks much like
another.  Instead here are some spring crocus from my garden to brighten
up this wordy post 

If I was just to keep this to a little run down of what I have sown this week, it would be short.  This short.  I didn't sow anything this weekend as I was out and about socialising.  A girl can't always be chained to the garden after all.  Instead this is a progress report.  I have little pots of soil coming out of my ears, a week off sowing is not a bad thing as I wouldn't have anywhere to put them.  Something eventually had to come up, but like watched kettles, its all been a bit frustrating.  Finally though, things are beginning to move so here instead is a little run down on what has put a green snout above soil in the last two weeks.

Sweet Peas - My first batch were really getting to the point where I couldn't ignore that they were desperate for something to climb up.  I had arrived at that point which I had been trying to ignore: it was time to fill the giant pot.  I hate this job, digging out compost from the bag is quite possibly the dullest job there is in the garden.  And thats without attacking the compost maker we have at the bottom of the garden.  Sweet Peas enjoy a bit of nutrients, so I attacked the compacted bottom with a trowel to give my seedlings the best possible conditions.  The pot was bottomless and consumed so much soil, but eventually it was filled and my peas are in and seem fairly happy.  I will do a further sweet pea update in due course.

My second batch are short, stubby and just the way I want them.  They are coming on beautifully,  and since being put into the 'coldframe' two more have even popped out to bolster my numbers.  They look so happy I have got all mean with them and evicted them from the cold frame to freeze outside.  No sign of my most recent batch yet, but then thats to be expected.

Cucumbers - Two seedlings popped out in record time, much to my joy.  The packet said germination occurs in 7-21 days, but these two were out in just six.  One the one hand: yay! cucumber seedling success.  On the other hand: here we go again with the debacle that is growing cucumbers from seed.  I had those seedlings whipped out into the colder garage the moment I spotted them, hopefully they will enjoy their slightly less comfortable surroundings.  So far, so good, but I still expect tears at some point.  No sign of any of the others.

Stocks - I find stocks fairly reliable germinators, and this years batch have not disappointed.  They popped up two weeks ago but have only just reached a decent enough size to go into the cold frame.  I would ideally like more than have currently sprung into action, so stocks have been added to my list of seeds to do a second batch of.

Snapdragons - One pot of these have sprouted, but the other has not.  This is probably due to me watering one pot and not the other.  I am struggling to keep all my garage pots adequately watered. I have to swap them about as I can only water the ones sat in the washing up bowl.  The seedlings are positively miniature, this may be perfectly normal, but not having grown them before I wouldn't know.  I haven't evicted these yet as they just seem too small and vulnerable.

Sunflowers - Both my velvet queen seedlings are appeared, but only one sunburst mixed so far.  These are lovely robust seedlings, they don't mess about, up and out and getting on with it.  Lets hope they are robust because they are also in the garage.

So far so good I think.  I would like to see a bit more movement from my aquilegias which are hogging a lot of vital space at the moment, but this may be my own fault due to the watering situation.  Lots more sowing to be done this weekend, and a nice clear schedule to get on with it.  If it rains I will be annoyed, but as its Easter weekend this can only be expected.  There is about to be a huge yellow explosion in my garden of narcissi so lots of pretty pics soon.  

My week in sowing 4 - Peas, carrots and peppers

Home grown produce, can't wait!

This week for me has been all about the vegetables.  My garage windowsill is still stuffed and nothing shows any sign of wishing to move out any time soon, so this week I again am focussing on more hardy souls, like peas.

Sugar Snap Peas - Jessy.  I didn't sow my own sugar snaps last year, I cheated and bought them from the garden centre.  This did not turn out as well as you might have imagined.  The peas are sowed commercially more than one to a cell, and I didn't get them planted out quick enough so by the time I did I couldn't get them separated.  I was pretty brutal with them, but in the end had to plant them in clusters. This did not aid picking as I couldn't see the things amongst the thicket of vines.  This year Im doing it myself.  Im going to have a lot less plants to work with, but they will hopefully not be such an unruly bunch.  Currently I have sown 15 peas, but I might do a second crop to keep the peas rolling in during the summer.  I think peas are fairly unfussy, so I sowed them in normal compost in one of my segmented plastic trays.  They like to go in two inches deep, but the cells are not much deeper, so they have to make do with an inch and a half.

Pea - Kelvedon Wonder. I did grow these last year, and they were a roaring success; big, juicy, succulant.  Or at least the slugs thought so.  They dived in promptly the moment the leaves had appeared.  I saved most of them, but this year I will be on it right from the start.  Being only a different type of pea I sowed them in exactly the same way as the sugar snaps.  Both are outside braving it, protected by some fleece at night.

Small and perfectly formed, Bugs Bunny would be proud.  Ok maybe I wouldn't mind them a tad bigger

Carrot - Chanteray Red Cored 2.  I loved growing carrots last year, can't remember exactly eating a huge amount, but thats hardly the point!  Its all about the growing in my book, especially as carrots take so little effort.  I do not have the right soil for carrots, they like it sandy I believe, and thats the last thing I have.  Thick and heavy solid clay is all my garden beds can provide.  Therefore I grow carrots in pots.     I mix some fresh compost with some old compost garden soil mix, with a good couple of trowel-fulls of sand.  The good thing about stocking up on garden essentials last year, such a great big old bag of horticultural sand, means that when you get up one morning and decide to sow carrots, you don't first have to make a trip to the local garden centre.  Hopefully my little orange friends will enjoy my soil recipe.  The seeds are just sprinkled on the top of the soil, et voila! C'est fini.  Leave till summer.

I know I thought my compost was poor last year, but looking back its terrible!  Seems to be mainly composed of wood rather than soil.  None of these seedlings survived the great slug outbreak of 2014

Pepper - Sweet minimix and sweet topepo rosso.  Ah the peppers.  We had a tumultuous time, my peppers and I, last year.  I sowed them, they grew, I had a beautiful tray of seedlings, and then a slug invited itself to dinner.  One, just one little seedling was left after that first feast, and then he snuck back and polished that one as well.  So my peppers were exclusively provided by shop bought plants.  Weirdly, my all time most read post is one in which I admit that I neglected to eat most of the peppers I grew last year.  Despite being popular, I plan to not repeat this post again this year.  As the seeds are from last year I didn't stint.  I sowed ten-ish seeds in two pots, one variety in each.  They are currently snug on my kitchen windowsill, but they will have to elbow themselves some room the moment the pop up.  Seed compost, quarter of an inch deep, if your interested.

Who named this plant?! How can such as thing of beauty be called a toad lily? So spotty

Tricyrtis - hirta. Ok so its not all vegetables.  This is another new seed purchase.  Shouldn't have admitted that, the other half will not be happy! I bought these at Kew Gardens because I saw these at a garden I visited last year and was completely entranced by them.  Getting hold of one myself has been a different matter.  I have not been able to get my hands on this elusive seed anywhere, so when I saw it in Kew, it was clearly going to be mine.  These are a lily-type of flower, which hopefully means they will not be poisonous to my cat.  Their common name is the toad lily, which I love.  What an unattractive  name for a lovely flower.

Sweet Peas - Yes more sweet peas, remember I wish to hand them out in the street to strangers in the summer.  I actually sowed these last week but I forgot.  I sowed one of each of the varieties I sowed originally.  They have the challenge of germinating outside which none of my sweet peas so far have had to do.  I can't promise this will be my last batch.

Sweet pea update - hardening off and neighbourly competition

I was feeling rather smug last week, considering myself to be well ahead of the game.  My first set of sweet peas had survived the great transition to outdoors and a week later all but one are still going strong.  The one that didn't got crushed in the covering up process so I have cut him down to just above the first set of leaves in the hopes that he might sprout again.  Another has got bent but a little wooden splint seems to be keeping him in the game for the moment.  My frost protection method is very home-spun; I just place the pots on a layer of thick bubble wrap to stop the cold permeating in from the bottom, then lay a layer of fleece and bubble wrap over the top.  It may not be elegant but it works.

My second batch of sweet peas had also germinated nicely, with 12 up.  Before these got too carried away with themselves I also put them outside and even spent Saturday constructing a home made cold frame for them.  I feel a cold frame would be the answer to a lot of my needs, but they seem rather pricey, and being fond of saving money where I can I have instead made one from an old shelving unit.  This shelf-thing has had many reincarnations.  In the beginning it was one side of a desk with a set of drawers in my room.  Then when the desk copped it, it just became a little bookshelf.  But now it is surplus to requirements and is laying on bubble wrap on my patio with a fleece and bubble wrap covering over the top.  So basically its just a more structured version of my normal covering up method.

So far, so good.  My stock of plants is coming along nicely, but where to plant them?  Last year I used the large pots of the mother's, but these are all currently full of narcissus waiting to flower and won't be free for at least a month.  So instead I spent the gloriously sunny day (for a change) that was Saturday emptying the largest pot of fuchsias that was waiting to be cleared out.  It was one of my favourite pots, so it was a slightly sad moment as I heaved the whacking great lump of terracotta about, but fresh beginnings are always exciting.

It looks a mess but is, in fact, my cold frame

It was at this point that I noticed my neighbour.  Yes he who likes to torment me!  He was only planting out his sweet pea seedlings into the garden already, and staking them.  And that's when I cancelled the smug parade.  I would have thought he was a bit keen myself, I had considered planting mine out but I thought they would be a nightmare to protect from the frosts.  Because lets face it, its early March, there will still be frosts.  Or at least that's what Im now praying for to kill off his plants.  No that's mean, I should not be competing with some poor 80 year old man who is just enjoying his garden. At least I can hold to that fact that mine will be nicer colours than his because I sowed them myself.  Maybe I am molly cuddling my plants too much, but the frosts can still be quite hard at this time of year.

Anyway I have two more pots of compost in the garage ready for my next batch of sweet pea seeds, waiting because I always forget to soak in advance and I have found it to be a most satisfactory method of coaxing them up.  I have just read the RHS gardening advice page for sweet peas which says don't soak them because they are liable to rot, but I don't additionally water mine and I haven't found this to be a problem.  So I plow on in my quest for sweet pea glory.

I bought more sweet peas

A little flashback to last year's sweet peas, because the seeds are hardly visually interesting

It's now two months since I sowed my first sweet peas for this year, and somewhat surprisingly given my track record with these tricksy plants, a fair few are still alive.  Last time they featured on here my seedlings had just had their growing tips, who were happily growing away, ripped mercilessly out by moi.  It felt very wrong and even though I know this is the done thing, I did expect what was left to wither and die in protest.  But the barbarity of my activities had the desired effect; we have bushiness.

I have high hopes that at least some will survive being transferred from the relative luxury of the garage into the cold harsh world of outside.  Unfortunately that time will come to them all, the question is when.  I am aware that you are meant to treat your sweet peas like your men: treat them mean, keep them growing... or something like that.  However Im not sure they would enjoy a good frost so I can see myself having to nip out there every night to tuck them up in bubblewrap.  How tedious.

The time has come I feel for my second sowing, and the moment to admit that I have bought more since my last sweet pea post.  Yes more sweet peas, because eleven varieties are not enough apparently.  Doing my previous sweet pea posts it occurred to me that what was sorely lacking amongst my chosen mix was a nice dark berry shade to really round out the colour combinations.  Well of course this schoolboy error had to be rectified immediately so straight onto Sarah Raven's website I went.

One variety would have done, but no, I bought four.  Its a case of once I start I just don't seem to be able to stop.  In my defence they are all distinctly different colours, although it is still unjustifiable.
So from Sarah Raven I bought 'Black knight' and 'Almost Black'.  Spot the theme going on here.  Im pretty sure I have another plant called Black Night, might be a scabious... Anyways Almost Black is the darker of the two being like a blackened purple, like the purple of a bruise.  It should contrast nicely against all my shockingly pink and frilly varieties. Black Knight isn't remotely black, I would describe it as a dark claret, or the colour of red wine.

The third new variety isn't technically new.... more displaced, shall we say.  I have so many seeds that I actually forgot I had bought some.  It was only while sorting through them about a week ago that it came to me that I had definitely bought seeds from Sarah Raven in the past.  Not a clue where they might be though.  An hour's search later revealed them to have been sitting about four feet from me when I had the revelation.  Amongst this bonus hoard was Barry Dare; an absolute shocking pink.  Wouldn't believe Im not much of a fan of pink from my sweet pea choices would you?!  But a nice surprise even still.

One of my current seedlings, alive, not in focus admittedly, but alive

Lastly I bought Cupani; a mix of claret and purple.  Small flowers, big smell has this one apparently, and the most closely related variety to the original wild sweet pea of sicily.  Completely 100 per cent did not need this one but was having an 'oh throw it in' moment.
I sowed them in exactly the same way as I did previously, soaked them overnight and then two to a pot.  Although think I got a little confused so may have sown four Barry Dares and none of another variety!

Sweet Pea Varieties- Thompson and Morgan

Im back with round two of my sweet pea seeds run through.  Today its the ones I bought from good old trusty Thompson and Morgans and two from Eagle Sweet Peas.  I say 'good old' but I discovered the other day while clearing out my email inbox that Thompsons is emailing me at least every other day.  Whoa! Im as keen as anybody on the garden but thats a bit much.  Stop bombarding me.  Also they track when you have visited their site and send you an email thanking you for your visit, which is just plain creepy.

Anyways, that's all by the by, they sell nice sweet peas, although as usual the packaging irks me.  Only varieties sold in stores have pictures, hence why there is only one included in this post.

Turquoise Lagoon: Hello! Will you look at the colour of this badboy?! I am promised that these astonishing colour-changing blooms transform from pink to turquoise as they mature, even after cutting.  If so this will certainly liven up the traditional bunch.  Saw it, bought it, enough said.  This has disappointment written all over it.  This is bred by 'renowned' breeder Keith Hammet.  He may be an excellent breeder, but I have never heard of him.

Blue Shift: I was so taken with the concept of a turquoise colour changing sweet pea I also bought Blue Shift, turquoise's sister.  This one changes from mauve to true blue as it matures.  I clearly don't need both of them but I have very little willpower to resist pretty things with.  This is described as being 'totally unique' (clearly ignoring the similarity to Turquoise Shift here).

Little Red Riding Hood: This one is just too cute.  Exactly like the name suggests each flower has a bright pillarbox red hood in the form of the top two petals.  The bottom of each flower is white blushed with pink.  Love the look of it, love the name, love everything!

Prima Ballerina: This one is just so girly and pretty, with the flowers being either lilac, purple or cream on the same plant.  I really seem to have been taken by varieties that are a mixture of colours rather than just a solid one, in delightful girly pastel shades.  Not really my usual cup of tea at all.  However I cannot deny that it is rather special.

Spanish Dancer: When I was writing this post I got to the end of the packets and was rather disappointed to find that I had in fact not bought Spanish Dancer like I thought I had.  But I had, the packet had merely slipped under the box.  As thrilled as I am that I did splurge, you really don't need both Prima Ballerina and Spanish Dancer, just like you don't need both Blue Shift and Turquoise Lagoon.  Apart from me, I need all of them.  I don't get Thompson and Morgan, they describe the colour of every variety, and then for one just randomly doesn't.  This appears to be pale yellow with two shades of pink.  Delightful.

Having revisited the Thompson and Morgan site to see pictures of my purchases (see above for picture gripe) I am rather wishing I had also bought 'Tickled Pink' and 'Mollie Rilstone', although as both are creamy pink in nature Its probably best I haven't.  Next year.

I only bought two from a specialist grower this year, we will have to see whether they germinate any better than the last bunch.  I plumped for 'Leominster Boy', a salmon orange, and 'Charlies Angel' which should be pale blue.  Blue and orange do after all make such a good colour combination.  I had to buy these blind but a little googling has revealed that 'salmon orange' should really be called 'coral'.

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

A winter sweet pea planting- an update

Thats what I like to see,  little green heads poking out

The great sweet pea growing debacle has begun for another year.  One year, I will figure them out and grow trays upon trays, but the way things are progressing, chances are it will not be this year.  About a month ago I sowed my first batch of seeds and there has now been enough activity for a progress check.

My seedlings got their wiggle on, light does not lead to aesthetically pleasing
straight seedlings

The first thing to comment on is the soaking method.  Before planting, I taught my seeds to swim for an evening in the hope it might help them pop out of their tough little brown bomber jackets and grow.  This part at least has been a success.  I had almost a full house of germination; planted 22 seeds and had about 18 come up.  So yes, it was worth dragging my pyjama'd self out of bed to do that.

Last year I grew my sweet peas indoors which was just a huge mistake.  I might enjoy the central heating but the peas just shot up, became leggy and then collapsed.  Its too cold outside at the moment to just put them straight out, although I am working on possibly providing a little outside shelter soon but for the moment the garage seemed the best option.  Sheltered but not heated with a window for light.  What could go wrong?

There is some serious leg on these seedlings, but other than that look fairly healthy, notice the strangely yellow one, and mr droopy in the front, he isn't coming back

Well lets just say my peas are being a little too keen on going upwards and not keen enough on producing leaves.  Legginess has struck again.  What adds insult to injury is personally, Im not very leggy at all, but the peas?  Oh they are all over that.  Clearly there is some source of heat in that garage unbeknown to me.  Maybe the cats going in there and giving them a warm snuggle behind my back?  Little furry traitor.  I thought keeping a window slightly ajar might help freshen the place out and stop them getting too carried away with themselves, but where as they were about two to three inches tall and threatening leaves last time I checked, this weekend when I paid them a visit it was more like a solid four to five before leaves.

Two of my slightly shorter specimens

To begin with I felt all was lost, lob them into the recycling bin, but actually I don't think the situation is as bad as it first appeared.  Having revisited my post from last year I can see that actually, while taller than I was hoping for, they are significantly more robust than the ones grown last year.  Last year my shoots were pale and thin, and roughly 8 inches to the first leaves.  Not to mention bent over in several places as gravity became too much for them.  At least this years are thicker and green, except one peculiar little guy who is resolutely yellow.  Perfectly healthy and growing in all other aspects, but could virtually join the cast of The Simpsons.  Im hoping this is some peculiarity of the variety.

Now the first leaves have spread I have pinched out the growing tip in the hope of encouraging a little bushiness, which is ironic as in all other areas of my life bushiness is something I would actively avoid.  Even if the very tallest are too tall and will wilt in later life, some of the late comers are significantly shorter.  I don't think I have been helped by one of the mildest Decembers in recent years but then when did the weather ever help my growing activities.  So we will see, maybe they will be ok, or maybe I will have to plant every last seed currently in my possession to get five, but either way every time I do this I learn something.  Like how much I hate growing sweet peas.

A winter sweet pea planting

Re-hydration in action, look what a little water can do

I would not normally even consider sowing sweet peas in the winter.  Monty Don, that great stalwart of British gardening and a man I would gladly marry in exchange for access to his greenhouses, once conducted an experiment on his show Gardeners World to see whether sowing in winter gave you some great advantage.  Apart from slightly earlier flowers, he concluded that it did not.
However, in my case I can see other advantages in winter sowing.  Anyone who read about my efforts last spring will know that on the whole it did not go well.  For such a simple thing to grow, after all sweet peas are often touted as the beginner's flower, I managed to make a right royal mess of the whole sowing process.  I made some fundamental errors that I guess we all have to make to learn, but that I will endeavour not to repeat this year.  By sowing in Winter it will free up germinating space for another batch in spring, thereby giving two bites of the cherry.  Or possibly two opportunities to mess it up.

Seeds in a glass jar post soaking

In an effort to ensure germination across the board I have followed the backs of the packets to a tee, although I remember covering last years with newspaper until they germinated and I have forgotten to do that this year.  Oh well.  The packets said soak the seed overnight in water before planting, so thats what I did.  Only I remembered I needed to do this only after I was already in bed so I actually got back out to soak my seeds, such dedication.
I soaked two seeds of each variety of the eight that I have.  There is limited space in my germination area so I didn't get too carried away.  The packet said use warm water, I guess that gets the process started, so I placed the jar by a radiator to try and keep the water warmish all night.  A nice little layer of paper over the top to stop sneaky midnight drinks by the cat.  I was surprised how fat the seeds actually got over night.  They went in looking like very dry black peppercorns and came out in the morning about a third bigger and beautifully smooth, like they had enjoyed a round of botox overnight.
Being devoid of a greenhouse my germination spot of choice is the handy windowsill in the internal garage.  Space, as I said, is limited by it being a small window and also the current home of my narcissus and hyacinths.

I always find an empty washing up bowl great for putting holey damp pots in so your brother's stuff doesn't get ruined when you rest all your seedlings on it

Im hoping that they will germinate fine in there as it is an internal garage so it never gets too cold so they won't freeze, but it also isn't heated giving me long straggly seedlings.