Two of my favorite plants
– flowering sweet peas and melons – have been singled out by the
National Garden Bureau for 2005.
This nonprofit educational arm of the North American home and
garden seed industry has declared 2005 the Year of the Sweet Pea
and Year of the Melon.
Two of my favorite plants – flowering sweet peas and melons – have been singled out by the National Garden Bureau for 2005.
This nonprofit educational arm of the North American home and garden seed industry has declared 2005 the Year of the Sweet Pea and Year of the Melon.
Even if you’re not much of a home gardener, you’ll easily be able to grow this year’s honorees. Flowering sweet peas can be planted by seed right now, while melons can be started by seed as soon as danger of frost has passed. This week I’ll cover sweet peas, while I’ll bring you details about growing melons next week.
If you’ve been reading this column any amount of time, you already know that my passion for sweet peas goes back to childhood. My mother would plant climbing sweet peas along our back fence each winter. By early spring, we would have wonderful, scented sweet peas to bring inside for fragrance. Sweet peas are great in bouquets and are a natural room freshener.
North America’s enchantment with sweet peas goes back to the 1930s. Box cars of sweet pea seeds would be shipped from California producers to customers east of the Rockies. English gardeners call sweet peas, “the Queen of Annuals.” Again, their vivid colors, fragrance, length of bloom and climbing abilities all add to their air of romance and popularity.
The fact you can plant them in cold weather, and they’ll be one of your first bloomers in the spring garden is just another benefit. Note: you can grow sweet peas all spring and summer, but they don’t last very long in hot weather. That’s why I always start them now and enjoy them throughout spring before out hot weather sets in.
Sweet peas are one of the easiest flowering annuals to start from seed. They are commonly directly seeded in the garden, doing best in rich, well-draining soil. Sweet peas need about 50 days of cool temperatures to bloom gloriously in your garden. There is no evidence that soaking sweet pea seeds before planting will increase germination. However, nicking the outside coating of a sweet pea seed with a nail clipper has proven to increase both the speed and germination of seeds.
As mentioned, sweet pea plants are mostly climbers that need some type of support. Chicken wire or plastic netting strewn over a wood fence works fine. Dwarf varieties grow about 24 inches high, while standard climbers can grow six to 10 feet.
Sweet pea flower forms can be single, double or semi-double. Most flowers are highly fragrant. Certainly, some of the older cultivars are the most fragrant. Sweet peas offer one of the widest color ranges in the plant kingdom, including crimson reds, Navy blues, pastel lavenders, pinks and the purest whites. These colors are found in solid colors, bicolors, and streaked or flaked flowers.
Their flowering capabilities, deep fragrance and early spring bloom makes it obvious why sweet peas have always been a personal favorite. Try them now! Next week: the Year of the Melon.
