Sweet Pea Wild Swan

Keith Hammett's world class breeding programme has brought us this beautiful range of Sweet Peas. All these varieties are suitable for planting from winter to early spring.

Planting
Soak your seeds for 24 hours before sowing. This softens the seed coat and speeds the sprouting process by a few days. Sow into small pots first to establish the plants, then transplant out when they are 3-4cm tall. Once your seedlings have four sets of leaves, gently “pinch” out the central stem between the top set of leaves to encourage the development of bushier plants.

It is important to keep them outdoors after sowing as the plants will be a lot stronger and stockier than plants raised indoors in a protected environment with lower light. Sweet peas need a humus-rich soil and a sunny location. Prepare the beds you are sowing into with compost to give them a great start.

After Planting
Sweet peas are climbers, so make sure you provide something to climb or ramble over.

Flowers
If you regularly harvest their blooms, or deadhead before their seedpods form, they will push on to keep producing flowers for as long as the vines remain healthy. Sweet peas are greedy feeders so top up their beds with liquid fertiliser a few times over the flowering season.

After Flowering:
To harvest your own seeds, you need to let the seed pods mature and dry on the vine. Mature pods are cardboard brown and easily crack open. As they self-pollinate, any seeds you collect will be true to the cultivar they were harvested from, although mutations can occur sometimes.