Sweet pea sowing guide : autumn sowing

Autumn is well and truly here, there is a definite chill in the wind that we’ve not had for a while and the wind is starting to make its presence felt. The nights are drawing in and my alarm is now going off in the dark making getting up that much harder. In the mornings our heating has started to click on and our cat Jed is spending more time indoors snuggled up on the settee, he’s the weather-vane in our house. The autumn TV schedule has returned with lots of great shows to get you settled in front of the TV of an evening, drawing the curtains and pulling on the blanket to get cosy. But don’t get too cosy, there is lots to do in the garden if you want to get ahead for next year. There is usually still some lovely autumn days when you can pull on your gardening boots and jumper and get out there. Enjoy the autumn sun and that beautiful light in the garden. It always feels a bit bizarre that as your garden slowly slips into autumn that we are still thinking about seed sowing but hear me out, its time to sow one of my favourites of the cutting garden. Shut your eyes, forget the chill of autumn and follow me into the early summer garden, the bright greens of perennials in your garden getting into lush growth, biennials like sweet rocket bursting into growth and the first of the annuals flowering. Head down to the cutting patch, the wigwam at the bottom of the garden, slightly askew but covered in flowers in a multitude of colours like boiled sweeties, green tendrils of growth climbing up the support. Pull your snips out of your pocket, pick a big bunch of flowers and twirl it around admiringly in your hand. Then dive in, push your nose right into the bunch and take a deep breath, ahhhh heaven. This is one of my favourite moments of the whole summer, that day when you can pick your first big bunch of sweet peas. What is more joyful in the summer garden and now is a great time to sow them.

So I used to sow them in the spring and this is completely fine and good but I find that this is when all the other mad rush of seed sowing is going on and it can be a crazy busy time so now I prefer to sow in the autumn, usually in October, and I have had good success with that. Timing can be a bit crucial, you don’t want to sow too early as they can grow too fast and they then have to sit all winter and can run out of steam. But you also want to sow them while its still a bit warm so that they germinate nice and quickly. Then once germinated they need to be kept fairly cool so that they just grow slowly and steadily. When it gets very cold they will stop growing completely and just stay dormant till the weather warms up again. October seems to be a good time. If you have some where to protect them or even a propagator you can sow them anytime over the winter to be honest, they just need a bit of warmth for germination and then they can just tick over. I have an unheated greenhouse that can get very cold in the winter and I tend to just keep them in there in colder times and in the late winter and spring bring them out on nicer days. You don’t even need a greenhouse, Ben has a great method of sowing and getting them germinated and then keeping them in plastic boxes which gives them a bit of protection from the worst weather.

But there is another more relevant reason why sowing in autumn is better than the spring and that is that you can get them flowering earlier in early summer before the summer droughts kick in. Sweet peas are a hardy annual climber, they love a sunny spot in the garden but they need good, nutrient rich soil and critically they need good moist soil. If you sow them in spring it is perfectly fine, they get growing quickly in the warmth and you usually start getting flowers in July. But with the recent dry summers that we have had I’ve often found that they can struggle in those dry conditions, they have shorter flowers and can go to seed much quicker. So for the last 5 or so years I’ve really embraced autumn sowing of sweet peas. It means that you can plant them out earlier in the spring and they will start flowering earlier in June before it gets too hot and dry.

I tend to sow in root trainers or 9cm pots, the roots grow a long way down in sweet peas so whatever you grow them in they need some room to grow downwards. This is more important I think with autumn sowing as they are sat in their pots a lot longer than from a spring sowing. I use Melcourt Sylvagrow multipurpose compost which is nice and fine for seed sowing but also has a bit of nutrition in there to keep them going over winter. I sow one or two seeds per module or pot. Sweet peas are lovely seeds, little black balls and are easy to handle and push down into the compost about an inch down. Within a few weeks there should be signs of germination, love that joy of seeing the first shoots emerging.

Once germinated they can be moved to a cooler spot and just keep an eye on them to protect from slugs and keep watered every now and then as needed. It must be a bright spot though as they can get too leggy otherwise. They can be pinched out if they do start getting too leggy or after they have produced 2 or 3 sets of leaves. That just means nipping off the top growth down to the next leaf, leaving two sets of leaves below that point. Then you will get shoots emerging further down and you will get a nice bushier plant.

I bring mine out of the greenhouse in the spring, they are hardy so can cope with the cold. Just protect if we have a longer spell of frosts. Then hopefully you can plant them in their final positions in March or April. They need good rich and nutritious soil which is moist so I tend to mulch, where I’m going to plant sweet peas, with good well-rotted manure. This gives a good fertile soil that holds moisture. They will need watering in dry spells too and you can keep them growing well by feeding regularly with a seaweed feed. They do need planting against some support too and this can be what puts some people off growing them as they do need some tying in for a bit until they get themselves growing well. I tend to grow up an A-frame, but also have a soft spot for a wigwam which can look gloriously higgledy in a cottage garden.

Then once you have done all that, the only job you have to do is keep picking them once they start flowering. That’s a nice job though they flower so prolifically once they get going that it can sometimes be a challenge a challenge to keep up. I tend to do one big cut and cut all the flowers off (and any deadheads) and then leave it for a few days to a week and then do another big pick, its easier than picking here and there. Its pretty well known that Sweet peas start off with nice long stems but if it gets too hot and dry then tend to then produce shorter stems. This can happen as the season goes on, but don’t worry about that just pick flowers, stems and tendrils. This can then encourage new growth and if you give them a good feed and water they can often recover and go back to longer stems. Plus these bigger stems and tendrils look lovely in your arrangement.

We sell a nice variety of single cultivar varieties but also some lovely seed mixes, such as ‘Perfume Delight’ and ‘Mammoth’. The single varieties come in a range of colours, from pure white ‘Swan Lake’.

 

The deep red of ‘Winston Churchill‘.

The lilac flowers of ‘Leamington’

 

The gorgeous pastel lavender of ‘Alan Williams‘

 

The rich dark purple of ‘Beaujolais’.

And my current favourite ‘Mollie Rilstone’

But don’t forget you can also mix them in with your other flowers, great to add colour and scent to your arrangement. This posy includes the wonderful Sweet pea ‘Beaujolais’ a deep rich purple-red, with Cornflower ‘Black Ball’, Canterbury Bells, Cynoglossum ‘Mystic Pink’, Sanguisorba and Origanum.

 

This includes Sweet pea ‘Alan Williams’ in with Canterbury Bells, Cornflower ‘Blue Ball’ and Salvia ‘Oxford Blue’.

I hope I’ve convinced you to have a go at autumn sowing of sweet peas, have a look at the shop for the range of Sweet Pea varieties. You can go for more vibrant, dark, rich, shades like ‘Beaujolais’ and ‘Winston Churchill’ or more romantic pastel shades like ‘Leamington’ and ‘Mollie Rilstone’, alternatively just go for a mix. If you want true scent though I recommend the gorgeous ‘Cupani’, a bi-colour form of pink and purple. Plus ‘Painted Lady’ a gorgeously romantic, again with great scent, a bi-colour white and pink flower.

Happy sowing,

Higgledy Anne

(I’m on Instagram anne_hinks if you fancy a follow)