I sowed some end of Oct beginning Sept and they are all sat outside now waiting for the soil to be warm enough and dry enough to plant in. They all got Sparkled with a good frost this morning, thawed out and all perfectly well.
I also sowed some on Feb 1st, and they are all out in the cold frame, lid only down on forecast of a very cold/windy/rainy/freezing night.All doing fine
I sowed some more yesterday, hope to see the little shoots of green in 10 days or so.
The common factors about all of these sweetpea sowings are :
No presoaking of seed
No abrading or chipping of seedshell.
All seedtrays were put into an unheated cheap polythene greenhouse, which is opened during the day and closed for the night.
None were watered in when sown, compost felt slightly damp so that was enough for me, and only a touch of water every 2 or 3 weeks.
No chemicals, feeds, pesticides or anything given to any of them so far.
and they are all looking tremendous.
I have only ever spring planted sweetpeas before and never been 100% happy with the results even though I always dug a good trench well beforehand with lots of good stuff in.
Every other year except this year I have germinated them on a warm windowsill, only put them out when it was calm and sunny weather, watered lightly almost every night,
and I really think that most sweetpea seedlings, sproutings that do not do well are probably too warm, too wet and some perhaps do not get enough daylight.
They are very tough plants really, the only thing delicate about them is the scent!
Lets see how these turn out in summer first though and then we'll see *S*