Sweet, Sweet Peas

The one plant that I have thoroughly enjoyed growing this season are the sweet peas.  The scent and colours of the flowers are beautiful… I could bottle it up and make me a perfume, although it seems the cosmetics industry has been doing that for the past century.

Inspired nails init: Sweet Pea tips! I got my nails done the same colour, yah

I sowed the seeds back in March / April, and they grew and grew and grew to the point when I started to wonder what the point of them was. Eventually they started to produce droplets of buds that eventually opened out into delicately scented little flowers. I’ve managed to cut a small bunch every other day the more you cut the more they flower) and they make really cute table arrangements dotted around the flat.

This is a little jam jar filled with sweet peas, asparagus peas (before fruition) and a courgette flower. 

Sweet peas are climbing plants and therefore have very long roots to give them some stability (that’s my theory on things anyway). If you are going to sow sweet peas, save up as many loo rolls as you can to use as economical starter pots  -  simply fill them with compost, lightly water,  and place two / three seeds in each roll, about a depth of a fingertip down, and lightly cover over with the soil.  

Don’t press the soil too hard down as doing this is probably the plant equivalent of leaving your child to grow up and fend for itself with a pack of staffies on the local estate.  I like to think its best to give the seed the best start in life and not make it desperately fight its way out  for light and air. 

What’s great about using toilet rolls is that when the seedlings have finished their stint at junior school and are ready to attend the local comprehensive (that’s outside in big pots or window boxes to me and you) you can just plant the loo rolls directly into the container the cardboard will eventually biodegrade in the soil.

Cor, look at the raspberry ripple on that...

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