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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:03)
Welcome back to the Blooming Garden podcast. I'm Jane Westaby and today's podcast is a little late as I decided to record a special last minute episode because I just had so many questions this week all about sweet peas from customers, journalists, bloggers, and I'm seeing so many photos of really sad looking sweet pea plants all over Facebook and Instagram right now.
and I've had people DMing me with their photos asking for advice. So I just wanted to hop on and answer all of those questions in one for you all. They're actually really easy to grow. And with just a few tips, you can get blooms from May right through to September and the blooms literally do not stop. And who doesn't love a sweet pea, right?
Well, my son for sure, as one year I asked him to help me to cut them all through the summer holidays and there were so many it was like it would never
end.
So let's start with when to actually sow your sweet peas. Because when you sow your sweet peas can make a big difference in how you treat them and when they bloom.
so they are hardy annuals which means they can be sown in autumn for earlier flowering the following year and by early what I mean is May onwards for here in the UK and I'm on the south coast so maybe in a greenhouse or a polytunnel. It will probably be towards the end of the month but that's when I find that my wedding season really kicks in.
And if you can grow the Sunshine series, these will flower earlier than the Spencer's. They only need 10 to 11 hours of daylight where the Spencer's need 12 hours. So they will just bloom that little bit earlier. And at the beginning of the season, those extra few weeks can make all the difference. It's the difference between having blooms and not having blooms. So.
The biggest mistake I see people make no matter when they sow them is to sow their sweet peas indoors. Now sweet peas are a cool flower. They don't like the heat. They don't like being sowed in warmth. So I would always recommend to sow them in a greenhouse or a cold frame. If you don't have that then a sheltered spot outside in the garden somewhere maybe with something covered over them. Otherwise they will
grow really tall and leggy if you have them on your windowsill they'll just grow towards the light and they will shoot up and they will do this before their root system really gets properly established. So I sow my first batch in autumn and not too early either. If you're in the UK like me I find that late October and even early November is the perfect time for autumn sowing.
If you sow them too early, they'll grow too tall and it makes them just really hard to overwinter as they'll put on so much top growth at the expense of the roots. You want the opposite. You want short, stocky, hardy stems with a good root which will then be able to support those long stems throughout the summertime. So...
After sowing I keep mine in my cold frame or greenhouse, on the top shelf. They will germinate within a few weeks and I try not to water them unless the soil looks and feels dry and even only then I bottom water. By top watering these overwintering seedlings the surface of the soil it never gets the chance to dry out and that encourages damping off.
and that's definitely not what you want. I have a huge problem with damping off here in my garden because we're quite shady here on my location and we don't really get, in all honesty, enough sunshine in our greenhouse and in the summertime that's actually a bonus because we get afternoon shade but at the beginning of the year in springtime we could do an overwinter, we could actually do with a little bit more sunshine really and that would just help.
to help to dry out the top of the soil.
Jane Westoby (04:15)
So they stay in the greenhouse with no heating and I also leave the door open as much as possible just to allow some of that airflow. And then by mid-January, they are usually so tall, they flopped over. So it's time to pinch out the tips. And if you're wondering what to do with those pinched tips, then great news. You can actually root them to create even more plants. It's super easy. And just using a little bit of hormone rooting powder,
and just potting them up. And then I just pop the pot into a propagator. So they do need a little bit of bottom heat just to encourage rooting. But once they've rooted, I then move them to the greenhouse with the rest of the seedlings and grow them on in cooler conditions. So I've got a whole blog post on growing sweet peas from cuttings. So I will link to that in the show notes for you. So once I've pinched out the tips,
I then pop a cane in for support, tie the stems around the cane all in one big bunch and they are then planted out in around March time. They don't need much in terms of frost protection because they're hardy remember, you've stoned them in autumn, they are hardy annuals, they don't mind a little nip of frost, it's really not the end of the world, it won't push them back.
I would only really cover mine if we get snow and it's an extreme cold snap. If it's going to go way below zero for days and days and days, then I would just try to give them a little bit of protection once I've planted them out.
But if you can't sow in autumn, you can spring sow. Spring sowing can also be successful. They still need some cool weather, but they just won't quite be as hardy as the autumn sown sweet peas. So you might just need to plant them out a little bit later on in the year. They'll need a little bit more frost protection.
but again, you're not sowing them indoors. They will get leggy and they will get very, very tender. So make sure that you sow them in a greenhouse or in a cold frame and then pinch them out in around April, May time, and then they'll be ready to be planted out in around May. You can also direct sow them from April if you want a kind of, you know, no fuss approach or you don't have the space for pots, then you can sow them direct.
I'd just wait till the weather gets a little bit warmer. So before you even get growing you do need to make sure that your seeds survive though. So mice and squirrels absolutely love a sweet pea. They will dig them up before they sprouted and even after they sprouted so be sure to protect them maybe with a little bit of chicken wire or something over the top and once they have sprouted keep an eye out for slugs because they love them too.
In terms of how many to sow per pot, so this is where things get a little bit personal and it depends what you're using your sweet peas for as well. some gardeners, they like to use root trainers and so one or two per cell, they have a long root system and the root trainers really encourage that deep, deep roots that they need. And also if you're growing for shows.
and you want to grow individual vines and you want very long stems and you have the space to grow them singly, then the root trainers are great. But I'll be honest, and I can't even hide it because I post pictures all the time about my sweet peas and you'll be able to see full well how I grow mine. I'm a throw-and-grower, so I usually throw around, I'd say, 10 seeds.
into a large pot, so something like a 15 centimeter pot and that's how I grow them and when they start to grow they look really bushy. I pop the cane in the middle of them when I tie them up, I don't tie them individually, I tie one big tie around the whole lot and then that's how I grow them in in pots and I then divide them up at the planting stage so I will then even then put maybe
three or four together into one planting hole and for me that works just fine. We get masses of blooms. So the next controversial subject with sweet peas is whether to soak them or not. So I used to soak my sweet peas religiously for over 20 years, but last autumn I actually forgot.
I don't know what came over me. I was in a rush. I think it was probably quite cold. So I think it was November time. I just wanted to get back inside as quick as possible. And I just soaked them and completely forgot. I saved hundreds and hundreds of them. And you know, guess what? They came up absolutely fine. So while some gardeners swear by soaking, I can say I am officially done with soaking sweet peas.
So if you want to skip that step, then absolutely go for it. So what's ready to plant out? You need to choose a sunny spot in full sun, but they will actually tolerate some dappled shade or some afternoon shade. So last year for the first time, I grew some in quite a shady spot in my garden. It gets the shade all afternoon. So it's really only sunny up until midday.
and you know they did so well they lasted later on in the season it took them a bit longer to get going a little bit longer to bloom but once they did get going they actually lasted through to September so they were fantastic for late summer weddings and yeah they were fantastic so just a couple just a couple more things to remember so if you want your blooms in perfect condition
You might want to be cutting off those climbing tendrils because they wrap around the flowers and they do damage them. So I cut my tendrils off as much as I can and that does give you more perfect blooms.
So lastly, if there's just one more thing that you need to remember about sweet peas is to cut them and cut them regularly every two to three days, which will prevent them from going to seed. So this keeps the plant producing fresh blooms, fresh stems for longer in an attempt to reproduce. So that's how you can keep them going for as long as possible. So.
If you haven't sowed your sweet peas yet, there's still time up until the end of spring and even into early summer if you're going to sow them direct. So that's all for this week. And if you've enjoyed this shorty but hopefully very informative episode and if you'd like to read more about growing your favorite blooms, then do head over to our growing guides at www.thehampshireseedcompany.com where you can read all of our blogs.
So I will link to that in the show notes for you. Happy growing, have a great week and I will see you next time.