Crinkled Pods and New Life

At the end of August, after a summer of admiring their amazing blooms and pungent fragrance, I pottered in the garden to make my annual harvest of the pods from the Sweet Peas left to go to seed.

Wrinkled and spotty after a funny summer of rain, heat, wind, bizarre cold snaps and more rain, the pods looked rougher than they usually do. Briefly, I contemplated not gathering, but buying some seed.

I love seed packets, they bring a splash of summer to a dreary winter day. Every autumn I spend ages drooling over what will grow in my garden, how high the stems will be and how many blowsy flowers I will pick. Wandering around a garden centre I will pick up piles of packets, only to be that really annoying customer who, realising I have tens of pounds worth of seeds in my hand, have to embarrassedly put them all down in a muddled heap by the till and run away! I fill in the order forms of seed catalogues, tantalised by the amazing photography and wild colours, when the forms are complete I lose the catalogue and eventually when it is re-found, shred it into the compost bin. . .

To sate my floral passion and save my financial sanity (a bit), I have learned how to gather my own seed, to dry it and keep it carefully until it is time to sow. Cool, dry and no mice works well for me.

So, during November I have driven my family mad by collecting every plastic bottle and tub available and cutting them down to make 9-inch high pots. Finally when the stack of 'pots' began to take over the kitchen, regularly fall over and occasionally be used for craft projects, the time had come.

Before we go any further, I sense a mass mumbling about throwing Sweet Pea seeds into the ground outside in April and poking a few sticks next to them. I do this as well but the fiddling about in the paragraphs below is an annual ritual and does produce a different plant and flower. It's a bit like making a Christmas pudding versus going down to Lidl and getting one for £2.99.

On 25th November I filled the tall pots with cheap compost and planted about ten seeds per pot. Why tall pots? These beauties can stay put until they go outside in May, they like a long root-run and Sweet Peas take patience anyway so who needs to be fiddling about re-potting?

Today, a week later and the seedlings are an inch tall, bright green and waving towards the light each morning until they are spoken to kindly, given a drop of water and turned for their daily exercise.

During the next fortnight, as the leaves open I will watch for the first centre shoot, when this appears it will be snipped off with sharp scissors. Sounds cruel but encourages side-shoots and good strong stems. The poor things get their middles chopped out every couple of days until mid April when they are left to ramble before their 'release' into the garden. I told you it required patience!

Some years ago, my Sweet Peas began life as various types of specialist seeds bought at the Wem Sweet Pea show, who knows what the Sweet Pea Officionados would think of the plants that my seeds produce but I have not bought seeds for some time and each season the blooms are profuse, fragrant and amazing in colour.

This Autumn, along with the Sweet Peas and seed-heads from the huge shaggy purple and pink poppies which I collect and throw at the garden in about May, I also gathered a load of Cosmos seeds. The first batch of Cosmos for me, these fantastic bright pink and purple flowers grew to four and five feet tall and waved all summer - so much pleasure - I couldn't let that go. Lets see if I can do the 'Sweet Pea thing' with them.

Now, back to the seed catalogue. . .