Lathyrus odoratus

A floriferous, deciduous annual climber growing to around 2m tall and 0.5m wide.

Leaves are ovate to elliptic, and green with a glaucous tinge. Often highly scented flowers are produced on long stems with 3 -5 flowers per stem ranging in colours from white and cream to pink, red, blue, purple and streaked or mottled. Depending on the cultivar chosen they can flower from November through to March.

Prefers full sun to semi-shade in humus-rich, fertile, well-drained soil.

Sweet peas are often bought in punnets. Always choose healthy, well-grown plants and plant after rain. Before planting, ensure the root ball is saturated and remove from the punnet with minimal root disturbance and plant at the same level as in the container. Make sure they have support to grow up whether this maybe canes, netting or trellis. Gently persuade new growth to grow towards the support. You may need to gently loosely tie growth to the supports until established.

Mulch well once planted, this will suppress weeds and help conserve moisture. They will benefit from a fortnightly liquid feed with a high potassium feed to encourage plenty of flowers, regular picking will help too. Sweet peas are easily grown from seed. You can collect seed from your previous year's plants and sow that. They should be sown in spring about 2cm deep in good well-drained seed mix, alternatively, if your soil is well-drained they can be sown where they are to flower outside but will need protection from slugs, snails, rabbits and mice. There is no need to chip or soak seed as this has been proved to not affect germination.

Slugs and snails can be a problem and rabbits and mice love new plants. Powdery mildew can also be a problem in areas of high humidity.

Annual

The more you pick the flowers the more they produce.