Sweetpeas

Today's offerings:

 

Ahhh thank you, this year it doesn't seem to have flowered much, it's been great for the past 4 years or so

 

Is it one of the pernnial types then @DaveyB rather than annual? The foliage looks more like that, and the fact you've said it's been fine for several years suggests that too.
The annuals can get a bit manky low down as the season goes on, especially in pots. I wonder if there's also a real rain shadow where it's planted. Lack of water isn't great for any of them, and once there's lots of foliage in place, rain can't get in easily even if it's in the path of the prevailing weather.
You may also find the soil needs replenishing as all the nutrients will have been used up, and if the mix isn't soil based, there might be very little growing material in that container.

The first of mine appeared properly yesterday. Large container, and with plenty of plants, but they'll be fine in my site. Lots of food and water

 

Our sweet peas in the ground are producing some heavenly scented blooms. The ones in the pots are also doing well but not nearly as well. Their stems are a lot shorter and while the pots are very deep they don't get the water enough deep down....but then we haven't had any rain for the plants in the ground! The colours from seeds that we keep on collecting, now since 2020, are continuing to be true to the colour of the original plants. Gregor Mendel would be very impressed.

 

First ever SP....

 

Gorgeous!

 

So after cutting it right down a few weeks later we have lots of growth again

 

Having been able to bring some fabulous sweet pea flowers indoors with their amazing scent we have had to stop as the great greenfly has descended and we don't wont them indoors. However we have noticed a wren taking a long time among them and so maybe the greenfly are giving the wren a good meal.

 

Always a balance eh, @On the Levels ?
I don't get a lot of greenfly on anything, but the sw. peas are the most vulnerable. The blue tits get them pretty quickly if that happens. Not many for them this year though.

 

Same here, the cut-flower value of mine has virtually finished because of greenfly infestation.
After many years of growing sweet peas, this has been a very disappointing year in this respect.

Alas, I'll continue to enjoy them as a garden display for the rest of the season.

 

I have grown some sweet peas seeds indoors, can I now take them outside are they very hardy? Do they need to be hardened off?

 

They will definitely need hardening off. Though sweet peas are pretty hardy , they would suffer a shock without hardening off. Mine were sown in a cold greenhouse in October, I started hardening them off in February and planted them out mid March. They handle cold temperatures ok, but one thing they seem to struggle with is cold winds. With this in mind I put a fleece barrier around the outside of the wigwam for the first few weeks.

 

Weather permitting we hope to plant out our sweet pea seedlings that were sown indoors and now have been hardened off. These are from seeds collected from our plants in 2023. Germination has been brilliant. We did collect from 2024 so we have a fall back if needed...well we will sow so more anyhow even though it seems late.

 

I'll harden mine off next week and plant out early April. These were sown early Febuary.

 

Okay I have been hardening off my sweet peas this week, so now thinking of leaving them out til late, I won’t be back until 11pm tomorrow, then on Friday they can have a all nighter, that set them up for the weekend.