how to plant sweet peas

frolic garden planning

I’ve resolved to make this the year I truly get back to the garden. I used to be quite a gardener (my wild cottage garden circa, 1992, here). It’s my favorite place to be and I feel most fulfilled when I am outside laboring and touching the earth. I am even armored with the most delightful garden journal, seen above, (a gift from my dear friend, Cori).

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First up on the agenda: Sweet peas. Sweet peas like cold weather and can tolerate light frost so now is the time to plant. I have mostly shade in my garden but there is a sunny patch where tomatoes have done well in the past, so I decided to plant some sweet peas there.

Planting sweet peas

Bing wanted to partner up for this post, so I used their search engine to brush up on my sweet pea planting skills. Before planting, you can either soak the seeds overnight which I’ve done before, or you can also make a small nick in the seed with a knife or nail clipper to expidite the germination process.

bing

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My friend, Amber, came over and we dug up the soil and added some compost to it. Sweet peas like soil with good drainage because they need to be consistently moist but not soggy. Don’t ever let sweet peas dry out! We planted the seeds 1 inch deep, 6 inches apart, in groups of three.

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Then, we covered it back up with soil and gave it a good water.

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This gorgeous garden book, Martha Stewart’s Gardening, was gifted to me by my mom when I was around 12. I brought it out to brush up on sweet pea growing tips.

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Martha says she sows seeds on St. Patrick’s Day through April 15th on The East Coast where winters are harsher than our mild Northwest temperatures here in Oregon. This allows her to have sweet peas throughout the early summer, before the heat wave hits! A fun thing: If you use the Bing search engine, you can sign up for Bing Rewards and earn points. Those points add up each time you use Bing, and then you receive gift cards to places like Amazon. Which is exactly what I am doing to stock up on new garden books!

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Have you planted your sweet peas yet? Happy Gardening! Oh and for more sweet pea growing tips, visit Floret Farm’s blog!

Photos: Chelsea Fuss. Wardrobe/Modeling: Amber Furqueron. Assitance: Erica Gomez. Sweet pea tips found via Bing on Renee’s Garden Seeds and The Seattle Times. Sweater by Hetterson. Dress from Goodwill. 

This post was created in partnership with Bing.

8 comments

  1. Sigh…. we are still under over a foot of snow… no sweet pea sowing happening any time soon, especially since they are calling for a small storm tomorrow – a good 6-8 inches more…

  2. Can’t wait to get more gardening tips from you, Chelsea! Just planted my first container of flowers on my little balcony. Sadly, I haven’t had a real yard in years, but maybe I can plant some more flowers in my sister’s yard. How do sweet peas do in a container? I imagine you’d need a pretty large one. And YAY for the new site launch! Looks good!

  3. I haven’t planned to grow sweet peas this year.
    But I managed to get some soil+ recycled containers & organic seeds to try harvesting veggies for the first time on my tiny balcony.
    I’m SO excited about this project 🙂

  4. The site looks lovely and the images are, as always, fabulous! 🙂
    One thing though, that I though I might add to this, which is utterly important when planting sweet peas, is that you cut them once they’ve gotten their first true leaves, this way you’ll get much sturdier and bigger plants. I cut mine back as much as 5 times and get lovely plants! Also, you can, when you presow them indoors ( I sow mine in milk cartons because of their long rootsystem, in March), keep topping up the soil in the pot/carton to make the plant develop a bigger rootsystem. And don’t forget to give them lots of fertilizer and to deadhead the flowers to get more.

    Anna, Swedish gardener 🙂

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