The daughter of some friends is getting married next summer and wants her flower colour scheme to be blue. As one of the church occasional flower arrangers I'll probably help with the flowers but I thought I'd like to help to grow some too. These sweet peas will add to the Thomas Hardy-esque style of country wedding she has planned. I put them in shallow cold water about 3 days ago and today they all had a good shoot. I've put them a few at a time in 5" pots with a bit of root room, watered them in and put them in the cold frame. I did the same with some others last week and these are now pushing through the compost.
The seeds above came from this sweet pea that was self sown where last year's sweet pea frame was. It's a lovely blue and I hope it will come true. If not, then the ones that aren't blue will decorate my house! The previous batch were from a dark blue-purple from my new allotment plot. Again, I don't know what the chances are that they will breed true but if I don't try I'll never know!
I keep thinking I've picked the last of the autumn raspberries but they keep coming. These will be eaten tonight with a good vanilla ice-cream (the kind with the black bits in!)
7 comments:
Strewth - I hadn't thought about sowing sweet peas at this time!
I guess that you'd recommend it?
You are amazing - not just helping with the flowers but germinating seed six months in advance, that's friendship.
You definitely deserve your raspberries and vanilla ice-cream {smile}
Mmm, I know what you mean about vanilla ice cream with black bits in. I hadn't seen it until we came to live in France. I buy it all the time now.
I didn't know you could start sweetpeas off so early! Will they cope with the winter in the cold frame Ok? Do you have to keep watering them during the winter?
The raspberries look delicious! and real vanilla icecream is just the right thing to go with them.....
Thank you for the reminder to sow sweet peas - we had a lovely show of them tis year. I suppose sowing the fresh seed helps a lot with germination.
So envious of those raspberries - yum yum!
Celia
You can sow sweet peas in Spring or Autumn. Yes, they do need the occasional watering in the cold frame, but I'll move their pots into the greenhouse over winter. They are really fairly hardy - the self-sown chap in the photo had been out in the border all winter. You can sow them in situ now if you want to - but 'in situ' here is still full of stuff not yet gathered!
I shall sow some in Spring too just in case - I want as long a season as possible as we haven't yet heard if the date is fixed - supposed to be July some time.
Oh yum. I just got my first packet of sweet peas -- I love smelly flowers, and they're supposed to fill the bill. Those rasperries are wonderful looking! Lucky ice cream.
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