Sweet peas the essence of summer garden

In the beginning, sweet peas came as summer gifts from Marjorie’s garden, small vases of nodding, slender-stemmed flowers, bouquets of red, pink, purple and white. I would set them in a sunny window of the room where I worked and enjoy the smell of orange blossoms and honey for days.

We cut them together now, often at the end of the day when their colors glow in the garden’s last light. Or one will wake at dawn to walk about the garden with the dogs, returning with a fist full of blooms for the other. For days on end, the rooms are filled with the scent that only comes from sweet peas.

Sweet peas from Marjorie’s garden get their start as soon as the soil can be worked, typically late April, in full sun beds. We turn composted cow manure into the cold soil with a fork, raising beds compacted by weight of snow and ice, then drive angle-iron posts into the ground at either end of each bed, pounding them as deep as the ledge will allow. To the stakes we tie a net, the kind used to keep birds from the strawberries, to serve as climbing support for the tender tendrils.

While it is possible to buy transplants for setting out in the garden, Marjorie prefers to sow seeds 1 inch deep and 2 inches apart, then fill in gaps caused by poor germination with transplants. Gaps there will be, for germination is never better than about 80 percent, and there are always a few dormant seeds, nature’s insurance against a late hard freeze. By soaking the seeds for no more than eight hours before sowing, you can identify the ones most likely to germinate, planting only the ones that swell.

For best results, forget the soaking and scarify each seed to allow moisture to enter the seed coat. Do this with the corner edge of nail clippers, simply clipping a small nick through the brown top coat of the seed. Don’t try to remove a chunk of the seed; often you will barely see the small cut. This nicking process takes time, but it produces the highest germination rates.

When the plants are several inches tall, thin to a final spacing of 5 inches, and when seedlings have three or four pairs of leaves, pinch out the top pair to promote branching. Keep sweet peas evenly moist throughout the growing season, mulching with straw and watering during summer droughts.

Through three centuries of garden culture, sweet peas have undergone several transformations, often sacrificing fragrance for larger bloom size. The best varieties may be those developed over the past 25 years by New Zealand breeder Dr. Keith Hammet, plants that combine tolerance for extremes of weather with old-fashioned fragrance and large, ruffled blooms. (An excellent local source for both seed and plants, including many of the Hammet varieties, is Sweet Pea Gardens on the Surry Road in Surry.)

This summer I also want to try varieties selected for growing in pots, small plants with 8- to 10-inch stems or mounding and spreading growth habits that do not need support. Available colors include a rose-pink and white bicolor and a mix of lavender, pink, dark purple and mahogany.

The summer garden would be incomplete without the fragrance of sweet peas. For some it is orange blossoms and honey. For me, it is the scent of a shared passion for gardening.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to reesermanley@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.