Sweet Peas

Sweet Peas are traditionally sown on St Patrick’s Day, the 17th of March, although it’s fine to sow anytime from late February till June. Later sowings can be made, but you then risk the plants not growing as well as they might.

At Lambley we sow individual seeds 1cm deep in 7.5cm pots. We don’t direct sow into the garden because we grow our sweet peas on the previous season’s tomato trellis and as we still pick good quantities of ripe flavoursome tomatoes well into May we are reluctant to pull the tomato vines out earlier. Sowing the sweet pea seeds in pots also gives us much better control.

Sweet pea seed can be sown directly into well prepared garden beds as long as attention is paid to watering until the seed germinates - they shouldn't be allowed to dry out.

We have some excellent varieties sourced from specialist English sweet pea growers. Due to the difficulties involved in importing sweet pea seed and the often poor viability of much of it, we are now collecting and selling seed from plants grown in our own stock beds.

Old Fashioned Highly Scented Sweet Peas

These are the best for garden decoration, vigorous, free flowering and very fragrant. They are good as cut flowers but not as good as the Spencers.

Strength of fragrance. 0=none 6 = strongest