As soon as the sweet peas’ brittle, brown shells appear, start preserving the seeds. Sweet pea seedpods won’t germinate if you harvest them before they are fully developed. However, if you wait too long, the fragile seed pods will crack open and scatter their seeds all over the place. The procedure may take a few weeks, so keep an eye on them. You need to immediately pluck the pods if they start to split.
Sweet pea seeds are simple to collect. Remove the seeds from the seedpods and bring the plant inside. The seeds should dry for about three days on a level surface, such as a countertop or baking sheet, lined with newspaper. Once they are dry, store them to maintain their dryness in a freezer bag or Mason jar with a tight-fitting lid. Before planting, keep them in a cool location.
How are pea seeds extracted from peas?
As peas generate seed in the same growing season as they are sown and are primarily self-pollinating, there is less need to be cautious about preventing cross-pollination when using this crop as your first step into seed saving.
Assessing Seed Maturity
When pea seeds get hard and their pods begin to dry out, shrink, and begin to turn brown on the vine, they are ready to be harvested. About four weeks have passed since the eating stage.
Harvesting
Pea plants should be pulled up, rooted first, and hung in a cool, dry place until the pods are browned and dried if they are not entirely dry before the first frost. Break open the pea pods to release the seeds once they are completely dried.
Storage and Viability
Peas should always be kept in an airtight container and kept in a cool, dark, and dry location to prevent moisture and humidity buildup. Pea seeds can survive in these settings for three to four years.
Do sweet peas reproduce on their own?
Although sweet peas can be grown in pots or hanging baskets, a larger in-ground growing area is typically preferable. These plants want lots of space both in breadth and depth because the size of the blossoms is inversely proportional to the size of the roots.
It is advised to use containers that are at least 18 inches deep because lesser sizes can stunt growth. Use smaller containers if you don’t care about this. In either case, the blossoms are lovely. Just make sure to water them regularly to prevent drying out.
Look for sweet pea seeds that are advertised as being suitable for container growth.
In a warmer climate, yes. It is definitely feasible for some sweet pea plants to self-seed the next year if you allow them to go to seed in the fall and let the seed pods burst open and release the seeds. This is known to occur in zones 7 or warmer. If the seed does not freeze throughout the winter, it might also occur in regions with lower temperatures.
With pinching back (selectively removing the tips of major stems) and deadheading (removing dead blooms and their stalks), sweet peas will grow more profusely, although it’s completely optional.
At the time of planting, install the trellis or arch. Make sure the plants are getting hold of the supports and nicely covering the trellis by checking on them every few days.
Yes. Pods will develop once the blooms have finished blooming. These pods will contain seedlings. When they are brown and dried and the pods are just beginning to open, they are suitable for harvesting.
Yes. The secret is to select sweet peas when the blossoms at the stem’s top are still closed. Make a precise incision through the stem. Put the freshly cut flower right into a vase filled with room temperature water and cut flower preserver. In a vase, they typically last for 4 to 5 days.
Should sweet pea pods be removed?
You must consistently water your flowers throughout the growing season since dry soil causes them to set seed more quickly. When your sweet pea plants are fully bloomed, be sure to deadhead them and remove seed pods as soon as you can to promote the production of new blooms.
See this video for some fast advice on “how to sow, plant, and grow sweet peas”:
Sweet peas are the perfect plants for you if you enjoy using fresh cut flowers to decorate your home with color and aroma. They are excellent for cutting since they grow more as you take more flowers from them. Using our sweet peas center, you can learn everything you need to know about growing and caring for sweet peas.
Will sweet pea seeds keep for the next season?
Heirloom or old-fashioned sweet peas are lovely and aromatic blossoms. Pick an heirloom variety if you want to save seeds. Modern hybrid seeds could be disappointing because they won’t likely resemble the parent plants.
You don’t need to go to the trouble of saving seeds if you intend to grow sweet peas in the same garden location again the following year. The seed pods rupture when they dry, dispersing their contents to the ground. These seeds will produce blossoms during the next year. However, use these simple steps to gather the seeds if you wish to plant them somewhere else or share your supply with a friend.
Stop deadheading a select few strong, lovely plants. The blossoms must stay on the plant until they are dead since seedpod formation doesn’t start until after the flower has died. The rest of the garden’s plants should be cared for as usual, with deadheading to ensure continuous spring flowering.
How soon should I start taking sweet pea seeds?
To tie in sweet peas, view David Hurrion’s No Fuss video tutorial here:
When blossoms start to develop, start fertilizing with a heavy potash fertilizer, such tomato food. Picking regularly will promote more blooms and stop plants from setting seed. In extremely dry conditions and when growing in pots, water sweet peas.
Learn how to extend your sweet pea crops in this useful video from Monty Don. Monty explains how routine picking will keep your plants in bloom well into September and throughout the summer. Additionally, you’ll always have fresh flowers for the home:
Growing sweet peas: problem solving
Slug and snail damage is more common in young sweet pea plants. Use copper bands, beer traps, or the biological control Nemaslug to keep them away. Learn more about repelling snails and slugs.
Leggy sweet peas can occur occasionally. David Hurrion offers the following advice on how to save them:
The soil around plants can become particularly dry in hot, bright weather, which can cause sweet peas to lose their blossoms. Check out this Quick Tips video with Catherine Mansley from BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine for tips on how to handle and avoid this issue:
Saving sweet pea seeds
Starting in early September, seed can be harvested. Till they have taken on the color of a paper bag, leave the seed pods on the plants. When you’re ready to sow them, gather them on a dry day, separate them from their pods, and store them in paper bags in a dry location.
spring
- From March to May, you can easily plant your young sweet pea plants outside. Before planting out, sweet pea seeds sown in the winter or autumn need to be potted up into larger containers. Spring-sown seeds can be transplanted from their rootrainers.
summer
- Pick your sweet peas, then put them in indoor vases. Remove the seed pods from your sweet peas to continue deadheading them. You’ll need to harvest and deadhead them frequently when they’re at their height.
Should I dry the peas before planting them?
Once you’ve finished gathering pea seeds, make sure to properly dry them off before storing them. It’s crucial to dry pea seeds before storing them because else, they can mold.
Simply leave the seeds outside for a few days until they are completely dry. Pea seeds should be totally firm after drying.
Pea seeds can be dried and kept until spring in a plastic container (film canisters work excellent for this!). They can also be kept in paper bags or little envelopes.
You can construct your own seed envelopes if you want to share your seeds with others, or you can take it a step further and get personalized envelopes—how fun!
I keep my seeds in a transparent plastic container, however a Seed Keeper may be ideal for you if you prefer to organize your seeds more effectively.
How are sweet peas multiplied?
Young sweet pea seedlings can be used as sources for cuttings. It is rather simple to take cuttings and get them to root and flourish if you just have a few plants of a variety and want more but are out of seed.
Young sweet pea seeds, a container of water, tidy, sharp scissors, and rooting hormone are all required. I apply liquid rooting hormone Dip n’ Grow. Without the hormone, I’ve tried rooted cuttings, but the results aren’t as good.
: Choose Your Sweet Pea Seedlings
About two months old and prepared for planting out are these sweet pea seedlings. Before I do, I’m going to cut a 5 inch piece off of each plant so that I may rapidly and readily grow new side shoots to replace the ones I cut off.
: Make Your Cuttings
Cut a 5-inch section of stem immediately above a pair of leaves with a clean, sharp pair of scissors. Dip the cutting for a brief period of time into the Dip n’ Grow liquid rooting hormone solution.
: Place Cuttings In Water
Your sweet pea cuttings should be placed on a warm windowsill that receives some indirect sunshine after being placed in a jar of fresh water. To keep an eye on them, I like to set them on the kitchen windowsill.
: Wait Awhile!
In around two weeks, roots will begin to form. Only 11 days passed between the photo’s roots developing. When roots appear in this manner, you can plant them in a quality potting mix. My rooted cuttings are then placed in an unheated greenhouse.
: New Growth
About six weeks later, the cuttings’ fresh growth is visible, and they are almost ready to be planted outside.
Final thoughts: I started the cuttings from “mother” plants that were begun in the fall (November). Cuttings were made at the end of January, and roots started to appear around the start of February. By the end of March, the cuttings had enough new growth to be planted.
Choosing sweet peas and perennial peas
The major consideration is whether or not aroma is crucial to you when deciding between perennial Lathyrus and sweet peas. Decide if you would then like an annual or perennial plant. There are several color choices available as well as climbing and bushier varieties.
Fragrance
Choose sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus), which are generally very fragrant, if you enjoy a pleasant garden and sweet-smelling flowers for indoor use.
Lord Anson’s blue pea (Lathyrus nervosus), a perennial Lathyus, is an exception to the rule since it does have a perfume.
How long the plant lasts
After setting seed, sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) only have a one-year lifespan. However, don’t let this deter you because they are quite simple to grow from seed. Lathyrus latifolius is an example of a perennial species that returns every year, however there are fewer options and they typically lack smell.
Colour
The annual sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus) has a large variety of blossom colors, including bicolored varieties. However, the perennial varieties do come in some uncommon colors, like yellow and orange.
Habit
The majority of Lathyrus are climbing plants, therefore support them with canes, netting, or allow them to climb over a bank or through a bush. For ground cover and pots, clumping varieties like the spring-flowering Lathyrus vernus and dwarf bushy sweet pea varieties like “Snoopea” and “Bijou Mixed” are excellent choices.
Buying sweet peas and perennial peas
Although many garden centers also sell a few sweet pea seeds in packets, the largest assortment of sweet pea seeds may be acquired from internet seed suppliers. In the spring, several nurseries and garden centers sell pots of germinated sweet pea seedlings that can be divided into individual plants and raised in pots before being planted outside.
There are a few seed specialists who sell perennial Lathyrus seeds, like Lathyrus latifolius, but many gardeners opt to purchase the plants instead. The plant you’re looking for can be found using our Find a Plant tool.
When to plant sweet peas and perennial peas
- Annual sweet peas should be sown either in late January or early April and planted out in April.
- Sow perennial Lathyrus in the spring or the fall.
Where to plant sweet peas and perennial peas
Locate a sunny area where there is room for the plant to grow or to bush out (depending on its habit). Also acceptable is a little light shade, especially for Lathyrus grandiflorus.
How to plant sweet peas and perennial peas
- To avoid cold shock, indoor seedlings should be hardened off for 10–14 days before being transplanted outside.
- Ideally, four weeks before planting, enhance the soil by incorporating a soil conditioner like garden compost or manure.
- Sprinkle general-purpose fertilizer, as directed on the pack, into the area where you plan to plant it, such as Growmore, Vitax Q4, or blood, fish, and bones.
- Before planting, water your plants thoroughly to hydrate the roots.
- Remove pots from larger plants and ease seedlings out of modules or pots while being careful not to snap or crush the stems.
- Plants should be separated by 20–30 cm (8–1 ft).
- Place climbing plants near to their intended support (within 5-7.5cm or 2-3in), with two plants at the foot of each cane if they are climbing a wigwam.
- After planting, water once more to help the soil surrounding the roots settle.
Use garden twine or sweet pea support rings to secure young climbing plant shoots to canes, pea sticks, netting, trellis, or shrub shoots that they will be growing up. Tendrils in contact with supports will naturally start to cling on, but if any are straying or in danger of snapping, keep tying in new shoots.
In dry weather, check on plants in the ground every 3 to 4 days and on those in containers every day because they won’t flower as well if they become too dry. Each time you water, be sure to use enough water to completely moisten the roots.
Apply a high potassium liquid fertilizer, such as tomato feed, once or twice a week on light or infertile soils. This promotes flowering, particularly in annual sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus).
Pick or remove dead flower heads as frequently as you can once flowering starts. For annual sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus), which will stop flowering if seedpods are allowed to form, this is especially crucial.
Pinching out
When plants are around 7.5 to 10 cm tall, pinch out the shoot tips of new spring-sown sweet peas for gardening (3-4in). This promotes robust side branching. Autumn-planted seedlings frequently naturally branch.
Cordons
Pick the strongest shoot and keep pinching out all the tendrils and other sideshoots as they grow whether you want to enter your sweet peas in a local show or just want to maximize the size of blossoms for cutting. By using this technique, the plant directs its attention to the blossoms. The term “cordons” is used to describe these single-stemmed plants.
One stem per bamboo cane or tall stake needs to be tied to them on a regular basis. To keep the shoot in place as it grows, you can use twine looped in a figure-eight pattern around the cane and stem. Use sweet pea rings, which are wire loops that wrap around the stem and cane and are lightly squeezed until they hold, to make things simpler.
Cordons have the potential to grow much taller than the typical 2 m (6 1/2 ft) estimated height.
Cutting back
Cut perennial Lathyrus back to the ground in the fall, or better still, wait until February to do it so the dead stems can serve as wintertime cover for wildlife. When flowering is ended at the end of the summer, annual sweet peas can simply be pulled out and composted. This might happen a little bit sooner during hot, dry seasons.
Methods
Sweet peas can be immediately sown into the ground in April, or they can be planted in seed compost pots in the fall or spring. Although it takes more time, pot-sowing is typically more dependable than direct sowing. If you plant in the fall to enhance your chances of getting early blooms, keep seedlings in a coldframe or cold greenhouse over the winter to protect them from growing lanky. Keep the coldframe’s lid elevated unless a strong frost is anticipated. Sweet peas planted in the spring flower in 12–14 weeks.
Sweet pea seeds frequently have a tough outer covering that makes them more challenging to germinate. Place your seeds on a layer of damp vermiculite or kitchen tissue and store them in an airtight container in a warm area. As soon as the seeds swell or start to sprout, plant them. Some gardeners like to soak the seeds overnight instead, but if you don’t plant them right away thereafter, they might rot. With a sharp penknife, chip off a little portion of the hard seed coat to allow moisture to enter and promote germination on recalcitrant seeds that haven’t swelled.
- Individually sow seeds in seed compost-filled rootrainers or 9 cm (3 in) pots. As an alternative, sow five to seven seeds per 13 cm (5 in) pot, spacing them 2-3 cm (3/4-11/4 in) apart.
- Add 1 cm (1/2 in) of vermiculite or compost to the top of the seeds.
- Add water and maintain at around 15C. (59F)
- It is optional to cover the pots with clear polythene or glass to reduce the likelihood that they will dry out, but keep in mind to remove the covering after the seeds have germinated.
- Once they have grown to around 3.5 cm (11/2 in), carefully transplant single seedlings into 9cm (3 in) pots if you have seeded them several to a pot.
- Use your thumb and finger to pinch out (remove) the top of the shoot just above a healthy leaf when the seedlings are 7.5–10cm (3–4in) tall. This will promote side branches, which are always stronger than the core stem that has been removed.
- At least four weeks before planting, remove all weeds from the soil and add a soil enhancer, such as garden compost, manure, or composted bark.
- Only plant seeds as the soil begins to warm, typically around April.
- To create a wigwam, plant any temporary supports, like pea sticks or bamboo canes, in the ground.
- Take out a shallow drill of dirt 2.5 cm (1 in) deep for rows of sweet peas, and plant a seed every 5 to 7.5 cm in it (2-3in)
- Seedlings should eventually be spaced 20–30 cm (8–1 ft) apart to provide the plants enough room to flourish. The extra seedlings may seem like a waste to compost, but unless treated carefully, their roots are typically too damaged to recover.
- Push two seeds into the ground at the base of each cane to a depth of 2.5 cm (1 in) when sowing around a wigwam of canes.
Perennial peas
In the spring or the fall, divide bigger plants. If you want to divide Lathyrus vernus in the spring, wait until after flowering.
Unfortunately, very few of the issues with sweet peas and perennial peas are extremely problematic.
- Powdery mildew, which is brought on by drought or insufficient hydration, results in a grey leaf coating.