Nothing says real summer like sweet peas…

At the moment we have them all over the house. I love having a bunch on the kitchen table, and a little vase of them in our bedroom too.

That sweet, heady scent is never overpowering but always beautifully fresh, and they come in so many delicate pastel colours. I love this time of year for being able to pick wonderful flowers from your own garden, and sweet peas have to be some of the most beautiful options around.

Top Tips for Sweet Peas…

• These hardy little flowers are easy to grow, they just need an area of the garden that benefits from full sun and well-drained but moisture-retentive soil.
• The semi grandiflora varieties developed over the past ten years have a wide variety of colour and scent.
• You’ll need deep pots to sow the seeds into, most gardeners use loo rolls which provide plenty of depth for the peas long roots.
• For the best show, and the most choice of colours, buy from seed and sow in pots, two to a pot, in Autumn or early Spring.
• Once germinated, keep them cool – in a potting shed or cold greenhouse – so the roots grow, rather than the shoots.
• Rather than wigwam-shaped canes, grow them next to something like netting in a circle, which has plenty of branches for them to cling onto.
• Don’t over-water them, plenty of manure and tomato food will do well, if you have to water them, do it in the morning.
• When the sweet peas are flowering, remove as many of the tendrils as you can every week and also snip off any seeded pods.
• Then, once in flower, pick like mad to encourage them to flower, and keep dead-heading too.

rpsweetpeas.com