A Sweet Pea Primer

People often ask me what my favorite flower is and the easy answer is “whatever is blooming right now.”

That’s true.

But I do have two very sentimental favorites: peonies and sweet peas.

I’ll tell my peony story another day because today my mind is very much on sweet peas.

My mother had a patch of them that she kept going on a stone wall every year. We used to mark the passage of the summer by the state of their growth: Just poking out of the ground meant the whole summer rolled out ahead. Blooms crowned the peak and the best of the season. As they started to make peas, things were winding down and when they turned brown and went to seed, it was time to sharpen your pencils and go back to school. Brown pea plants still make me a little sad.

Just smelling sweet peas now takes me back to Lake Beulah in Wisconsin and I will love them forever just for that.

Memories aside, sweet peas are a beautiful romantic flower with an incredible fragrance. And I can love them for that alone.

How to start seeds

Sweet peas are super easy to grow from seed and I’m going to share two ways to get them going. Whatever you choose, start early. Peas love a long cold start and can handle frost and even a little snow. So don’t be scared to give them what they really want i.e. the last licks of winter.

Preparing seeds

The old rule of thumb for sweet peas is to soak the seed in water overnight (or for a good 10 hours) before planting. They are tough hard seeds, so that makes sense and it’s what I did for years.

But, studies have shown that soaking doesn’t make any difference. In fact the same studies showed a slightly higher germination rate without the soak.

The new trend among growers is to skip that step. I’m all about any time saver, so I’ve given up on that particular springtime ritual and I’m here to give you permission to do the same

Sweet Pea seeds soaking in jars on my kitchen counter back in the day when I used to do that

Direct sowing

When you are ready to plant, you can just pop the seeds in the ground right where you want them to grow. Put them down an inch or two, mud them in and walk away. The key is to let them have that brutal early spring warming and cooling that they love. At our place I direct seed around March 6 and never go later than St Patricks Day.

Direct sowing makes for strong and healthy plants that bloom a little sooner than their transplanted peers because they aren’t disturbed at any point in the process.

Starting in pots

If you want to have a little more control and/or if you want to start just a little later, you can get sweet peas going in pots to transplant later.

Don’t cheat them out of that cold that they like. Keep them off of heat mats.

They can even be in a cool basement. When I start mine in pots, we get them going in our unheated hoop house before hardening off and planting out. I can start sweet peas in pots in April and have plenty of time to get them blooming for the season.

Try both methods and see what works for you.

how to grow

support

Sweet peas are a vine. But, they are not especially good climbers. So they’ll need some kind of support and you’ll need to plan a way to tie them on. If you don’t tie them, a few tendrils will grab on half heartedly, but mostly they’ll trail all over the ground.

Set something up for them and secure them from time to time throughout the season. They’ll reward you with an amazing wall of texture, color and an intoxicating fragrance.

At Melliflora, we simply tie some cattle panels to T-posts and use bailing twine to keep the vines on the panels.

For your cutting garden, you can certainly make something much prettier. My mother got her vines to cover a lovely old stone wall as a focal feature in her garden.

spacing

You can get away with planting the peas 8” apart if you need to be efficient with space. But, they get to be pretty big plants so you can spread them out more and still have an effective color wall when they are mature.

It would also be possible to grow a single plant in a pot on a patio of you provided it with a good support in the container.

Pinching

When the plants are about 8”-12” tall, pinch off their tops to encourage branching. Pinching produces stronger, bushier plants and many more flowers.

Keep their feet cool

Although sweet peas will bloom most of the summer, they never let go of their love for cool temperatures. In the heat of the summer, it’s important to mulch heavily or plant an understory crop that creates some shade at the root base to keep their soil as cool as possible. They will thank you with more and better flowers.

Sweet peas on their cattle panel trellis at Melliflora

how to harvest

You’ll get those amazing long stems of flowers early in the season. That’s the time when you can snip off just the stems with flowers.

As long as you keep picking, and the flowers don’t get a chance to make peas and go to seed, they’ll keep blooming.

Later in the season, allow a few pea pods to form - those are pretty in arrangements too. Just don’t let them mature into seed or the plant will quit.

As temperatures go up, stem length will shorten.

That’s ok. Short stems are cute in bud vases and pansy rings.

You can also cut off entire sections of vines to integrate the stems, leaves and tendrils into your design along with the flowers. The plant will create branching vines from the points where you cut and will respond well to the “pruning.”

Some of the better varieties have amazing stem length early in the season while it’s remains cool outside

how to design

In my mind, one of the most important principles of floral design is to place flowers in a way that lets them to do what they want to out in the garden. If you arrange them in the way they grow, it will give your designs a sense of confidence, ease and naturalness. If a flower wants to droop down, allow it and work that into the design. If a flower stands up straight in the field, help it do that in the vase. You can’t go wrong with this approach.

With that basic idea of “let nature be your guide”, there are two ways to work with sweet peas.

approach 1

If you harvest the stems alone, they naturally want to curl up straight toward the sky. I say curl, because if a vine is falling over toward the ground, the pea stems will bend and twist to point up. That’s all something you can work with.

Pea stems can add a lot of texture and depth when mixed with larger focal blooms like roses or peonies.

But honestly, Sweet Peas are so special and they are only with us for such a short time, there is nothing wrong with putting a mass of their stems in a vase all by themselves. I never tire of this simple design.

Sweet Peas are gorgeous all by themselves. In this simple arrangement, I’m taking advantage of that remarkable stem length by massing them in a vase. But, I also love to do a lower profile centerpiece type arrangement by tucking sweet peas into a pansy ring.

approach 2

The second approach is to work with the wild tendrils of the vines. Later in the season when the bloom slows down, I like to cut entire pieces of the plant and let them go wild in my arrangements. Because they naturally grow in every direction, you have a lot of freedom to place them in ways that make visual sense.

You can mix them into the body of the design to create interesting lines and open space. Or, place them around the bottom of your vase and let them trail down the sides. That’s a choice that will create a lot of movement and will anchor your design with the container. It’s especially fun to let those vines trail down vases that are elevated on a pedestal of any kind.

In this arrangement, instead of harvesting just the sweet pea stems, I cut entire pieces of the vine and allowed their cascading tendrils to tumble off the edges of this elevated vase.

One of Sweet Pea’s best features is its amazing fragrance. I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t like it and so many of us have powerful memories around this flower that all come flooding back when we smell it. So, place your arrangement to take advantage and to make sure you can smell those stunning blooms as much as possible.

seed sources

Are you excited to try growing some of your own? You should be able to pick up a packet of seeds anywhere that is selling garden supplies this time of year. I’ve even seen them on seed racks in the grocery store.

But, if you want something a little more special, here are some of my favorite online sources:

Melliflora - We grow sweet peas for seed every year. You can get just the seed from us, or you can combine it with one of our original water color cards greeting cards.

You can get sweet pea seed from us along with an original water color greeting card at the end of each season and as a gift for the winter holidays.

Farmhouse Flower Farm in Stanwood Washington grows some lovely varieties that you can get as single varieties or in mixes. Keep an eye on their web site or get on their mailing list to be notified of their annual sweet pea seed sale. They sell out very fast.

Owls Acre Seed in the UK ships to the United States and has an excellent selection along with great information on different sweet pea types and more growing tips

Adelia Farm has many varieties to choose from and they specialize in sweet peas

Sweet Pea Gardens does all sweet peas all the time