PETER SEABROOK
Peter’s top tips for growing sweet peas
RUN your eye down the list of sweet pea varieties in seed catalogues and it is a veritable who’s who, from ‘Alan Titchmarsh’ to the ‘Tiller Girls’, ‘Princess Elizabeth’ to ‘Sue Pollard’, ‘Dusty Springfield’, ‘Geoff Hughes’ and ‘Darcey Bussell’.
Every year the gardening press gather at seed trial grounds to witness the naming ceremony for the latest sweet pea variety and recent personalities honoured at Mr Fothergill’s naming’s have included sweet peas ‘Jimelda’ (after Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton), ‘Emilia Fox’, ‘Sir Henry Cecil’ and this year ‘Lady Salisbury’.
I have grown sweet peas as cordons for cut flowers for more years than I care to remember, the first requirement always being a strong fragrance. The variety ‘Hi Scent’ in white and tinged lavender is a must. Include this in a bunch and you will undoubtedly scent a room. I usually take a bunch in season into the The Sun’s London office and recently a member of staff said: “I knew you were in today, I could smell your sweet peas in the lift!”
Next I like to see a good range of colours: ‘Windsor’ (nearly black); ‘Charlie’s Angel’ (lavender); ‘Mrs Bernard Jones’ or Gwendoline’ (both pink); ‘Oxford Blue’; ‘Princess Elizabeth’ (salmon); ‘Restormel’ (red) and ‘Royal Wedding’ (white).
My aim is to have blooms to cut for Chelsea Flower Show in the third week of May and to this end seeds are sown direct in well-prepared soil the second week in October. Soil is trenched one spade’s depth with well-rotted manure dug into the bottom of this trench (what is called the second spit), ideally by this week, if possible giving the soil a month to settle.
Now I have a polytunnel a second sowing is made under cover a little later and May picking is achieved more reliably.
“I like to see a good range of colours”