SOW SWEET PEAS

Start them off now for plenty of fragrant spring blooms

It’s wonderful that one of our most-loved flowers, the sweet pea, is so easy to grow, hardy and flexible – simply sow between October and March in the greenhouse for beautiful spring and summer blooms with a heady scent.

If you sowed early you can overwinter young plants in a cold greenhouse, but in many places sowing over winter can produce really robust plants. You can sow directly into the ground in March or April, but this often has less satisfactory results.

As sweet peas need plenty of room for their roots to grow, use toilet rolls, long modules or root trainers filled with compost and sow two round seeds per module, covered with 1cm (½in) more of compost. Water in so the compost is damp. You may need to chit sweet pea seeds – using a pocket knife to remove a li le bit of the outer layer to aid germination – though it’s not often necessary. A general rule sometimes advised is that the darker the colour of the flower variety you’ve sown, the harder the seed coating, which will need chi ing.

Keep seedlings cool in a greenhouse once you notice they’ve appeared and be really careful that mice don’t nibble them all up! If plants are ge ing leggy, pinch out the growing tip if you need to when about three or four pairs of leaves are present, which promotes bushier plants.