Sweet peas are a rewarding flower, even in warm climates. Mine at the moment are making a splash of colour both outside and inside the house, but of course their superpower is their delightful fragrance when you have them in a vase.
Growing sweet peas
Getting the timing right is important. I put my seeds in just as the weather cools down in Autumn, in order for them to have the most of the cool season. Where Winters are more severe you can probably take your time sowing them.
Instructions often include to scarify the seed, i.e. rubbing it with sandpaper, nicking it, or even dropping in hot water, but I get good germination just by plain sowing, or if I think of it, by soaking in water for a day. They like rich free draining soil, preferably close to neutral pH.
The initial growth is quite slow, and each year I think they won’t do well, as I weed around them and carefully train them up supports, but then in late Winter they suddenly come good and a few buds become a mass of flowers.
Last year I grew sweet peas on the chicken wire fence of the first vegetable garden, but this year I made a trellis support for them; a line of star pickets with bamboo rails, and string droppers tied to individual stems. They still ended up spreading in an unruly fashion, but some stems took to the trellis.
They say that picking them keeps the flowers coming, and I certainly don’t spare them for the garden only. There’s always still a good display, and they are too nice a cut flower to leave outside.
As for seed saving, there are always plenty of pods at the end of the season, and so they will go into envelopes for next year.