Sweet success

“I always sow sweet peas around mid-October, hoping for a really good, earlyish display, which this year was by the third week of May”

This time last year we still had sweet peas flowering. Not prizewinning blooms I’ll warrant you, although even the least successful sweet pea is still a lovely thing. But, like the swallows, most sweet peas are gone by mid-September and their best time is early to mid-summer, although that is dictated by the weather and when the seeds were sown.

This year saw a very dry spring and a summer that was not ideal for sweet pea growers. They flower best in cool, damp conditions. If grass is growing well, so too will the sweet peas. As for sowing times, professional and competitive growers always sow sweet peas in October. There are two reasons for this. The first is because they