Sweet Pea training

Hi all,

I've planted out some sweet peas I've grown from seed and put together some tripod of canes to grow them up.

They are now up to 8-9 inches but are not climbing the cane. Does anyone have any advice about how to encourage them? They look too delicate to tie and I've heard just tying string from the cane and letting them 'dangle' them near the shoots will help - but sure whether to trust the source!

Any help for this novice gardener would be really appreciated!

Thanks all.

 

funnily enough I have just been out watering mine and tried getting them to cling to the canes!! so i too would like this answer! lol

 

You have to tie Sweetpeas to canes - they will probably cling to netting, but not to sticks / canes.

 

I Have grown Sweet Peas for the past 5 years. I have a 7 foot fence. I stapled a fine plastic mesh onto the fence and the sweet peas tendrils attached themselves with no problem..
last year they grew to @ 8ft tall.. Recommend you use Plastic Mesh you can purchase it by the roll from B&Q or stores of that ilk .it will last for ever..

 

As has been said, getting sweet peas to cling to, what to them, is a slippery cane 'aint gonna happen'!

Apart from plastic mesh, or tying-in, what you can do is to tie some garden twine to the top of your 'wigwam' or tripod and wrap it around the individual canes (spiral staircase fashion) just holding the free end down onto the soil with a small stone. The twine is just rough enough for the sweet pea tendrils to cling onto.

Alternatively, while the plants are still small, run some twine around outside of the bottom of the tripod (tying if off first), then make the same spiral staircase configuration round and around the whole thing until you reach the top and, again, tie it off. It may look a little bit 'cat's cradle' to start with, but if you use green twine it'll soon be hidden once the plants have grown.

Plastic mesh netting is fine (needs to be finer than 'pea and bean' netting though, which has something like 3" 'holes'), but it's the devil's own job getting all the dead plant material out of it if you're thinking of re-using it (unless you need an occupation for the long winter evenings!) - it's so cheap, you're better off just junking it at the end of the season, unless like music, you've got a permanent place for sweet peas.

 

I have an obelisk for my sweet peas and I tie double green string round it horizontally every inch or so then I tie the plants to those. Eventually they (sometimes) get the idea and start climbing! Being individual strings, they are easy to get off at the end of the season - you just snip each one and they come away with the plants!