Results of the sweet pea challenge

Last autumn we offered NZ Gardener readers free sweet pea seed to take part in our Great Sweet Pea Challenge… and here are some of your spectacular blooms!

Readers share pics of their blooms.

“I need money in order to breed plants,” Keith told me. “I do not breed plants in order to make money.”

In April last year we invited readers to participate in a very special sweet pea challenge. If you sent in a SSAE, we sent you free sweet pea seed… from plant breeder Dr Keith Hammett’s own sweet pea breeding programme. As we told you at the time the seed was what Keith sells as ‘Kaleidoscope’ which is actually excess second generation, or F2, seed from his own crosses. F2 is when you see the characteristics of the two parents of the cross put together in all sorts of different and unprecedented ways.

So readers were growing sweet pea varieties that – literally – had not been grown before. And if they grew a flower of a particularly remarkable colour or scent, they could save seed, grow it on for a few more generations and possibly fix a whole new cultivar!

Thanks to the many thousands of you who sent in for seed, and the hundreds and hundreds who have sent us pictures of the flowers they grew, with many of you saying you planned to save seed for your favourites in the hope it breeds true. I showed some of the pictures to

Keith who was tickled to see the enthusiastic response from novice plant breeders all over New Zealand.

“It is always rewarding to learn how plants I have bred perform with other people in different places,” he mused. “Breeding ornamental plants is akin to writing novels or composing music. All are acts of faith that we send out into the world. All can touch people, yet we are privileged to learn of only a few such connections.”