I have never declared myself an expert at anything, let alone gardening but I am a very keen amateur. With that in mind, let me show you my recent success with my sweet pea sowing….

I know many people start their sowing in Winter but I prefer to wait till March as we can have unpredictable weather for some time yet and I don’t have a greenhouse (yet). So, I got my happy gang of seeds and did something I haven’t done before – I soaked them overnight. This is often advised but hey, I make my own rules…usually. This time I decided to give it a go and by jings it seemed to do the trick.

This apparently helps break down the tough outer coating to help with germination. How seeds do this without our help is a good question as apparently quite a few seeds have this coating…the mind boggles…but back to the seeds….

After a short time using my wonderful cheap and effective trick for encouraging germination I ended up with lovely little plants – which I then pinched the tops off!

Do you pinch yours? Your sweet peas I mean. I confess I did do it to my first batch and thought I’d done it a little early but as you can see, the growth is bushier which is what I wanted. If you want bushy growth with lots of flowers, pinch off the top. If you want your plants to grow straight and tall, less flowers but on longer stems, don’t pinch out the top. I have left a few un-pinched to see how they turn out.

I haven’t had great success with sweet peas before, they have been okay but nothing exciting. This year I have been more organised so I am looking forward to seeing the results. Will bring them back at a later date so you can see their progress.