Spring?

[rinue]

A few days this week, it's been warm enough to go outside without a jacket during the hottest part of the afternoon, although a heavy sweater is still required. (A few other days this week, it's been below freezing in the evening.) Ciro and I have been taking walks from about 1pm to about 3pm, just for the novelty of being outdoors in sunlight.

I found a seed packet of Cupani Sweet Peas, which informs me that Cupani was the first sweet pea brought to home gardens for cultivation; it was discovered by a Sicilian monk (Cupani) in the wild in the late 1600s. I was duly impressed and have put them in the ground. If they come up (I do not have the best luck with growing from seed), I expect they will be very hardy but small-flowered, as this is my experience of heirloom plants. (Normally, we cultivate things to get bigger blooms or fruits, which of course has a vitality tradeoff. I am not a good gardener, but I have at least a passing understanding of botany.)

Comments

[movingfinger]

Are sweet pea seeds the ones that have to be nicked and soaked before planting?

I love sweet peas, but I have never even gotten six-packs from the garden shop to grow. They degrade into powdery mildew too fast.

Those early spring outdoors days are some of my favorites. I think my favorites are late-late winter sunny days when things are dripping but there is still enough snow for skiing, but the snow and the dripping water are full of light and the air smells spicy where fallen leaves and pine needles are exposed and wet. And the taste of the water then...

[rinue]

As I understand it, the soaking has been shown experimentally to make no difference, and the nicking just means they germinate a couple of days faster, but they are bits of garden lore that hold on tenaciously. But yes, they are the ones. I did get some sweet peas (not grown from seed) to survive last year, but "survive" is the best I can say; the vines never got more than maybe three inches long, which is how long they were when I bought them. I figure for $2 I can take the gamble. Odds have to be better than the lottery, right?

[movingfinger]

Gardening must be a form of sex, it is so riddled with folklore.

I hope your sweet peas all come up! Then you could practice Mendelian genetic studies.