The Sweet Pea Project: Sowing the Seeds for a New Gardening Year
Hello friends,
Although the garden may seem quiet in the middle of winter, now is the time when preparation for the next growing season begins. For me, July is peak sweet pea sowing season, and I always save this job for cold, rainy days when it's too wet to work outside. Sweet peas prefer germinating in cooler temperatures, so sowing them in winter gives them the best chance of producing armfuls of fragrant blooms in late spring and early summer.
Sweet peas have always been a favourite of mine ever since childhood, when my grandfather used to grow them in his back garden. Their fragrance would drift through the backyard during the warmer months, and ever since then I've dreamed of having a dedicated sweet pea patch of my very own.
Until recently though, I simply didn't have the space in my garden to do this. That changed last summer when our old lilac tree finally succumbed to the damage it suffered during last year's big spring storm. Once the tree had been removed, a section of the backyard fence opened up to full sun from early morning until late afternoon, creating the perfect place for a sweet pea patch. With the space finally available, it seems like now is the perfect time to turn a long-held dream into a reality. So let's begin, and I'll show you the little patch of garden where this year's sweet pea project will take shape.
My sweet pea patch will run along the western side of our backyard, beside the boundary fence that used to sit in permanent shade beneath the old lilac tree. This section of fence line is approximately four metres long, providing plenty of room for this new project. My plan is to install metal mesh along the fence, and let the sweet peas scramble their way upward, hopefully filling the space with flowers and fragrance throughout spring and summer.
With the growing area planned, it was finally time to pull out my sweet pea seed collection, and decide which varieties to grow. Over the years I've accumulated a large collection of sweet pea seed, so narrowing down the choices was no easy task. In the end, I settled on a collection of mostly Keith Hammett varieties, along with a few other favourites, and some homegrown seed collected from my own garden, all selected for their beautiful colours and sweet fragrance.
The varieties I chose and sowed were:
- 23 × Hammett Blue Butterflies
- 15 × Hammett Blue Shift
- 10 × Hammett Blue Reflections
- 15 × Hammett Brilliant Fragrance
- 10 × Hammett Burlesque
- 15 × Hammett's Surprise
- 2 × Hammett Licorice
- 6 × Hammett NZ Gardener
- 10 × Hammett Somewhere
- 15 × Hammett Sapphire
- 9 × Hammett Triple G
- 10 × Hammett Turquoise Lagoon
- 25 × Homegrown seeds from my garden
- 10 × Nimbus
- 10 × Swan Lake
- 10 × Sweet Pea Original
In total, I sowed 195 sweet pea seeds, which should provide a beautiful mixture of blues, purples, smoky pinks, bi-colours, and wonderfully fragrant blooms over the coming spring and summer.
Although 195 sweet pea seeds may seem like a lot, some of the seed packets were older, and experience has taught me that not every seed will germinate. The seeds were sown into seed-raising mix that had been sieved to remove large stones and wood chips, before being placed into four 50-cell seed trays.
After sowing, the seed trays were watered well, and placed onto shelving in my glasshouse. The shelving is covered with some shade cloth, which helps protect the emerging seedlings from strong sunlight, and it also prevents them from drying out too quickly.
There is always something so hopeful about seed sowing. In the depths of winter, seeds are a reminder that spring is never too far away, and that every gardening year begins with the promise of new life.
For now, the sweet peas are sown, and the waiting begins...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook.
I'd love to hear what you're growing, making, or enjoying in your own garden.
I've Gone Completely Dahlia Crazy
Hello friends,
If you were to ask me about my top 5 favorite flowers of all time, the list would be something like this: Roses, Lavender, Dahlias, Daffodils, and Cosmos.
But over the last couple of years dahlias have crept up to the top that list, as each of the gardening projects around our home ended up giving me more and more space to grow dahlias. It also didn't help that I started following a bunch of dahlia growers on social media, and also especially, Floret Flower Farm in the USA, on both Instagram and YouTube. I became especially fond of anemone dahlias, collarette dahlias, and single dahlia varieties, of course in a large number of colours and sizes.
It got to a point that I had developed a wish list of some very cool, but rare dahlias I just had to have...and come dahlia bulb pre-sale time this winter I went a little nuts buying them.
The next problem was figuring out where to put them, so out came my trusty Instax photo printer, and I got to work printing out photos of all the dahlia varieties I had, and also the ones on their way to me, and then I got to work organizing them. First up was developing a dahlia database based on type and colour and size.
The colour coding in the database give me a quick idea of where my dahlias are in terms of where they are in the world. Sage green are dahlias already in place. Bright green are dahlias which have to be moved. Apricot means that the dahlia is in storage in the garage. Peach means that the dahlia has not arrived yet.
Next up was to break down our garden into sections, and then arrange the dahlia photos in each area of the garden to get an overall plan. I'm going to use the following abbreviations for the different dahlia types: Anemone (A), Collarette (C), Decorative (D), Dinner Plate (DP), and Single (S), Waterlily (W).
Front Garden Right: Peaches and Cream (D), Penhill Dark Monarch (DP), Totally Tangerine (A). I grouped these based on similar colouring.
Front Garden Middle: Iced Tea (D), Keith Hammett Dream Seeker (C), Joal Kaitlyn (D), and Sweet Nathalie (D). These all have similarish apricot colouring.
Front Driveway Road: Yelno Harmony (W), Cafe Au Lait (DP). These have light apricot colouring.
Front Driveway Middle: Lucky Number (D), Aporo Road Strawberry (D), Molly Raven (D), Cafe Au Lait Twist (DP). All these have dark pink shades, and should look amazing together.
Patio: Zahra (A), Floorinoor (A), Misses Amy (A). Three anemone dahlias I bought very recently, so they go into pots this year because I have no more space in the garden.
Back Driveway: Silver Years (D), Strawberry and Cream (D), Dutch Pearl (D), Muchacha (D). A gradient from light pink to dark pink.
Back Garden Back Fence: Rosemary Webb (W), Islander (DP), Bonesta (D), Bumble Rumble (C), Cafe Au Lait Royal (DP), Sweet Sanne (D), Cafe Au Lait Rose (DP), Arthur Hammerly (DP), Mambo (A), Misses Miley (D), Impression Famoso (C), Fenna Baij (A), Julie-Ann (S, a dahlia I hybridised last year), Keith Hammett Mystic Sparkler (S). A gradient of colour from left to right along the back fence. It's a bit more loose in terms of shading toward the right side, with dahlias I didn't know where to put elsewhere.
Back Garden Far Right Corner: Keith Hammett Butterscotch (C), The Phantom (A), Dark Tiger (C). Collarette and anemone dahlias that are small and fit under the small tree in that space.
Back Garden Right Fence Back: Keith Hammett Protegee (S), Keith Hammett Delicacy (C), Pink Magic (D), Keith Hammett Tranquility (C), Lady Liberty (D), and Polka (A). Shades of pink and white.
Back Garden Right Fence Front: Great Silence (D), Fancy Pants (C), Salmon River (D), and Fairway Pilot (DP). More peachy tones.
As you can see I now have 48 dahlias in my garden (which don't include the seedling dahlias I'm growing in pots right now). In this second spreadsheet I've organised the dahlias based on where they are in the garden, and which direction they are in. It's a good idea for when labels come off the dahlias, and I can't figure out which ones they are after they die back in winter...
With this large amount of dahlias in my garden, I now have no space for any more dahlias (or any other plants really), even though I do have some more dahlias on my wish list like Rhubarb and Cream, Appleblossom, Thomas Edison, Marshmallow Baby, Negroni Sunset, Klara Zak, Dutch Delight, Breakout, Purple Flame, and Labyrinth.
Either I need to dig up what little grass space we have left, or I would need to get rid of our long, side hedge, and then build a new fence between us and the neighbours, and then make another garden...
For now I'll just have to pit the dahlias up against each other Hunger Games style, and see which plants survive each year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
PS - After this post was written I got word from NZ Bulbs that one of the dahlias that hadn't arrived yet, Dark Tiger, was unavailable, so I had to choose another dahlia to replace it with. I chose the waterlily dahlia "Twiggy", but then had to rearrange a couple of dahlias in that area of the garden to fit this change, as Twiggy grows much bigger in size than the space I had chosen Dark Tiger for...
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Social Media
Archives