Sweet peas flower in vibrant shades of blue and purple, right down to the palest pink, making them a beautiful way to add some colour to your garden during the summer months. However, if you are setting your sights on adding sweet peas to your outdoor space, you will need to plant them very soon.
Sweet peas can be sown under cover or indoors as early as January or as late in the year as October, ready to bloom in the summer.
However, they aren’t ideally planted outside until the weather warms up.
This can be as soon as March if the temperature allows, although most prefer to be planted between April and May.
If you are setting your sights on sowing sweet peas from scratch undercover, you only have one month left to get them ready in time for summer.
But, if your sweet peas are to be transferred outdoors, April is the perfect time.
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If you are planting seedlings, be sure to ease them gently out of their pots or modules, taking care not to crush or snap the stems.
If you are working with larger plants, make sure to remove the pots with care, and again take care not to snap their stems.
Space plants between 20 and 30cm apart in the soil or flower bed.
Sweet peas tend to need a structure or support on which to grow upwards. With this in mind, RHS recommends positioning any climbing plants close to their intended support.
Then, water again after planting to settle the soil around the plant roots.
Sweet peas will thrive in a sunny spot, though somewhere with a little bit of shade should not cause too much harm to your flowers.
Your plants will not flower well if they aren’t given enough water, so be sure to keep up a regular routine.
During dry spells, flowers planted in the ground will need to be watered every three or four days.
Flowers in pots might need a little bit more watering, so try to pay attention to those on a daily basis, making sure to pour enough water to wet the full depth of roots each time.
Once flowering has commenced, make sure to remove dead flower heads as often as possible.
This will allow the plant to continue blooming and is especially important for annual varieties of sweet peas.
If you are concerned about the soil in which your sweet peas are planted, it is worth considering a fertiliser.
The RHS recommends “a high potassium liquid fertiliser” much like those used on tomato plants.
This can be applied once or twice a week, depending on the soil type.
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