*First step is to sort out tea and snacks. I went very trad…Yorkshire tea and Digestives. It’s not going to wow the towpath maidens but it’s a sensible and well rounded combo. Just the job.
*Some say you must use deep pots or root trainers for sweet peas. I must say I haven’t noticed any difference in my plants when they’ve been sown in my usual 9cm x 9cm pots to when they’ve been sown in posh root trainers. Today I used the only pots I had on the boat, and therefore clearly the best pots. They are roughly 12cm diameter x 10cm deep…so roughly 1 litre.
*In the absence of my fav compost, ‘Melcourt SylvaGrow’, I picked up some Dobbies own brand which will do the job just fine. £20 for 150 Litres…ouch (and that was on offer)…welcome to 2024!
*Flash and I decided we’d sow five to a pot. I poked five holes up to my first knuckle on my first finger (1 to 2cm deep)…and sowed a single sweet pea in each hole.
*We sowed up 21 pots. This first batch will be destined for our chums at Taraloka, the Buddhist retreat centre. The nice niffs will assist the peaceful vibe.
*I’m expecting at least an 85% germination rate.
*Do you know we have a sweet pea bundle offer in the shop?
*Sweet pea seeds must be kept away from mice. Our friends Mus musculus (House mice) will go utterly potty for sweet pea seeds. If they find one they will scoff them all. Be warned. Cover over the pots if necessary.
*Sweet pea seeds also like a little heat to get them wriggling to the beat of spring. I am germinating mine inside the boat, underneath the boat piano. Every evening we’ll play them some avant garde jazz to hurry them along.
*Once they have germinated they must go straight outside in the cold. Try and keep them somewhere sheltered from the frost. They are pretty hardy but better be safe than sorry. If you have a greenhouse then that would be best. Mine will go on the roof of the boat and I’ll just cover them if we have a hard frost, or just bring them back in for the night…they will probably be ready for some more of my jazz piano by then.
*These will be ready to be planted out about mid April. We’ll chat about how we go about that when the time comes.
*There is no big rush. I will be sowing more throughout March and into April. I have some friends who have a horse and tortoise ranch, over the border in England. I’m hoping we can get the whole Higgledy sweet pea collection sown there to do some side by side testing.
I hope this is some help to you.
Kind regards
Ben and Flash