Comments on: Book Review: The Sweet Pea Book

By: Craig Levy

Craig Levy — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:21:40 +0000

If your current garden pea techniques are working, apply them to your Sweets for equal successful. An inoculent is useful but nicking the seeds with a sharp knife or razor blade will also work.

Deep soils enriched with compost and manure are a pleasure to work with. I’m ambivalent about an absolute need for deep soils. One assignment I had was growing Sweets in gallon pots on stakes. The plants were bushy and free-flowering but murderous to keep upright and well-watered.

Most garden books, especially ones devoted to a particular group of plants, begin with a chapter on origin and history. I find the information only mildly interesting and would prefer it being the final chapter in every book.

It is odd to not have illustrations diagramming the flowers and foliage. Sweets and other peas have such interesting and unique flowers, foliage, and stems it’s a pity the author missed the opportunity to show them off.

By: rosemarie hanson

rosemarie hanson — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:09:28 +0000

One of my favorite sweet pea websites is Fragrant Garden Nursery, located in Oregon. They have a lot of helpful cultural information.

By: LostRoses

LostRoses — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:36:10 +0000

My dear departed mother-in-law could throw sweet pea seeds in the ground anywhere and they grew beautifully. I never could get them to grow, despite my desire to have those lovely blooms and tendrils. She said her secret was that she planted them on St. Patrick’s Day. That didn’t work for me either!

By: Barbara in Finger Lakes

Barbara in Finger Lakes — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 19:38:22 +0000

My mother (a superb gardener) struggled to grow sweet peas in New England for decades. When I moved to Iowa, I rented a garden plot, and what the heck, threw some sweet peas in with the corn and the broccoli. They were glorious. Just the deep sweet black Iowa dirt, and lots of sunlight, and they bloomed like fools and smelled as good as a damask rose. However, since returning to the northeast, I have been totally unable to grow them. They put up a little feeble growth and go nowhere. I am thinking of asking a friend in Iowa to mail me some of her dirt!

By: Annie in Austin

Annie in Austin — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:24:00 +0000

Kathy, although my sweetpea ventures have been far from successful, the one thing I did know about was the traditional method of deep planting. But I didn’t hear about it in a gardening book – I learned about it decades ago, while reading an Agatha Christie mystery. Lucy Eyelesbarrow helps out Miss Marple, and proves her worth by “trenching for sweet peas in the proper way”, a phrase that sent me looking for further details. Gardening trivia shows up all over, doesn’t it?

Good luck with growing them!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose