Sweets For My Sweet (Sweet Pea)

Member Name: Emmald

Product:	Sweet Pea
Date:	08/02/09 (180 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A wonderful delicate bloom with a high fragrance

Disadvantages: none

A Sweet Pea is a highly scented annual and has to be one my my all time favourite flowers. Although you can buy the seed and raise your own plants in the greenhouse, which I did last year, most of us prefer to buy the plants from our local garden centre.
The Sweet pea starts life as a small thin straggly plant, it may look very puny but in reality it is an exceptionally resilient little plant.
Sweetpeas love being planted where they will be in the sun and last year during March I planted mine at the bottom of the garden along the bottom of the fence. The results were spectacular, the spindly plants soon gained strength and started to take hold. We made a good framework out of bamboo canes and garden twine for them to climb. As the plants start to grow make sure that you encourage them to twine up along and through the twine and Sweet peas just love water, the more you water them the more flower they produce.
Within a short time you will have a network of plants twining the framework and as they grow the width and overall height increases dramatically.
As you move into July the flowers will start to form, one flower consists of three or four frilly blooms on one single stem.
They look fragile, delicate and have the most wonderful sweet fragrance.
When the flowers start to appear you will get the very most from your plants if you keep picking them, the more you pick the more they grow.
Although you need quite a few blooms to fill a small vase they look exquisite and even better the room smells perfumed too.
When the blooms have been cut they don't last long in a vase, expect to get a couple of days life from them at most. But as soon as one vase is emptied there are more often than not enough blooms to refill it.


When I choose my seeds or plants I generally pick a mixture, this gives me all colours of the spectrum. I have to say that the pale delicate colours are my favourites.
Dwarf Sweet peas are good for small areas or garden tubs. There is a winter flowering Sweet pea but these are generally grown under glass.


Your Sweetpeas will continue to flower quite happily for a few weeks, as you cut the blooms ( you will notice that the stems are quite tough ) keep checking for pods, if you see any pods then remove them as early podding stops the flowering.
Sweetpeas will adapt to most soil types and gardeners have often referred to them as the `Queen of the Annuals`.
The intensity of their fragrance changes with wind, weather, the age of the flower and even the time of day.
The flowers and the seeds are poisonous and are not to be mixed up with the edible pea family.


If you have a fence or a piece of garden trellis that would benefit from having a colourful summer display running up it then the Sweetpea is an ideal choice. If you are short of ground space then use tubs or planters and enjoy their beauty and fragrance.


Sweet peas compliment any Bridal bouquet or make ideal table flowers. It seems they are enjoying a revival of interest but considering how beautiful they are I am surprised that they ever became unfashionable.
The Painted Lady variety dates way back to the 1700`s.
There is a huge variety of choice, large or smaller blooms, many different colours and some Bi- colours.
If you are looking to grow them for the first time take a look at some of the Heirloom Sweetpeas on offer.

Summary: Blooming Marvellous!