Sweet Peas

Hi,

We usually deadhead our Sweet Peas every day or other day, trying to remove them as soon as, to stop them developing the seed pods and dying off.

We have 4 plants together climbing up each of our 5 fence posts

Last night, Monty Don on GW said to remove All flowers every 8-10 days as that would give be most flowers throughout the season.

Seems a shame to completely remove them all, even if we staggered picking each post by a couple of days.

We wondered if others have used and found his method the best way ?

 

I pick mine every two days and always have vases full in the house. I have two rows in the ground and a wigwam in a large pot. The sweet peas in the ground have lovely long stems but the ones in the pot are very short. They all smell gorgeous and are one of the joys of summer. The scent does diminish after a couple of days so it's lovely to have more to pick.

 

I've got a bamboo cane 'runner bean' type structure with 30 canes and a few plants at the base of each, so approx. 100 sweet peas (variety Chatsworth).We're cutting them every 2 days and within a few weeks we'll have numerous vases of fragrant flowers around the house, and then there'll be so many we start giving them away.

Then we let a section go to seed to save for sowing next year, whilst continuing to cut every single flower from the remaining plants. Don't leave this too late for the seeds to fully ripen before cold, wet weather becomes the norm. Remove any plants producing rogue flowers

All that cutting, plus watering well every other day starts to slow down when other flowers become ready for cutting and it usually comes as a relief when the whole lot is left to go to seed. Only a brief rest before sorting out trays of seed pods.

So the answer is - lots and lots of plants so there's always plenty of flowers coming on between pickings. Here's a pic from last year.

 

I pick mine every couple of days too and place them all around the house.....mmmm their fragrance is a pure delight!

 

Mmmmm ....I can smell them from down here @Marley Farley