Sweat Peas

Tips for growing Sweat Peas Please, heard that you can soak in water first is this way any good

 

I usually break off a tiny bit of the outer casing before I give them an overnight soak. Cheers, Tony.

 

Thank you Tony

 

Pinch out the 3rd pair of leaves for a stronger growth.

 

This year I bought sweet pea seeds - they all germinated without any soaking or "chitting" - but the ones I saved from last year (perennial type) did not do as well - germ rates were less and much slower, and they are growing more spindly than the others - I will soak/scratch these if I need to do them again.

S.

 

I've found soaking always resulted in rotting seeds, so have always used the improved drainage method, putting 6mm of sand under the seeds and 12mm of seed compost above and have always got virtually 100% germination/survival ever since.

 

I've never soaked sweet peas and had no problems with germination.

 

Thank you all for the info, i should now be getting good results and a nice show of sweat peas

 

There are two schools of thought (at least!) on whether sweetpeas should be soaked.

My view is that old / stale / poor quality seed will germinate better if soaked. Trouble is you don't know if the seed you have bought has been lying around, or not ... well ... not until it is too late! 99.9% of the time 99.9% of your Sweetpea seeds will germinate with no extra effort. I prefer to soak mine for the other occasion when I would wait a couple of weeks and then discover that I was two weeks behind re-sowing a second batch.

 

Ive never soaked them,annual or perennial also never thought to pinch them out x

 

I think that is worth doing. Seems to me that having pinched them out, of the 3 or 4 side shoots that emerge one or two of them are significant more beefy than the others, and compared to the original too.

 

Thank you Kristen, I may try both ways to see if any differants

 

I've meticulously pinched out Sweet peas for years,millions of them...(OK not millions) but a few weeks back when i went into the GH i noticed that a furry creature 'had done it for me'it had nibbled the tops clean off barely leaving any of the plants left....but they've grown better and bigger than ever so since then i've taken a leaf out of the mouses book and instead of going through every single one and nipping them out i've just got the snippers and off with their heads...it looked a bit drastic at first but they're good looking plants now

 

I thought that gardening was to be quite and gentle, not go for it with hammer and tongs

 

Me too Jiffy,and relaxing...never been so worn out in my life