The seedlings are very hardy and do not need cosseting. Early spring means the day ends with a patrol of many mouse traps. Always keep your seedlings up and away from mice they seem to smell them a thousand yards away. but you can plant in autumn on the hope of an early start and early flowers. We often get them in late February/ March. Most folks in the north of the United Kingdom plant their Sweet Pea seed early spring. This has deep purple and red flushed flowers and the most remarkable scent of all. We also grow a single old variety called Matucana. In addition to the Spencers we grow Old Spice mixed, smaller flowers, with a heady, almost tropical, spicy scent. My favourites have to be the lovely white Honeymoon, and the deep crimson Winston Churchill. Outdoors we are still recommending the old Spencer varieties as they are the hardiest and have the best colour range that we know. Mammoth is, as I said, especially bred for indoor, poly tunnel cropping. We will certainly be growing them again next year. In water the flowers have lasted almost a week, a long spell for sweet peas, and we have had a big enough crop that we have been sending bunches to market. The scent of these sweet peas meets you at the door and is a rare pleasure as you cut the blooms. The plants are vigorous, the stems have been long and straight, the flowers have been huge and have kept coming, but the most wonderful thing has been the wonderful, pleasurable fragrance. The variety is called Mammoth - not a pretty name. This year Donald experimented with a variety bred especially for poly-tunnels and they were planted in an orderly row and wired up. By that I mean that after we have sold some thousands of sweet peas, the ones left are those that have lost a label, taken a knock or are an unfashionable colour, and so, in they go, supported by a few hazel branches. Until this year we have always planted the left overs. We are the only nursery I know that sells sweet pea plants in individual sweet pea tubes and in individual colours.
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