Sweet Peas
Lathyrus odoratus | annual | spring
My sweet peas began blooming May 1st this year. From left to right: “Oban Bay”, “Turquoise Lagoon”, “Jilly”.
My 2022 sweet pea season recap! I got a later start that I would have liked with these varieties, but they still wound up blooming in early May and I was able to have them for Mother’s Day! I started these seeds in mid December on heat mats in my potting shed, and planted them out in January. This year (fall 2022) I started my seeds in October and they went into the ground in November, so we will see how that goes in comparison!
Below are my notes on my favorite varieties from my 2022 trials, happy reading!
Queen of Hearts, Lunar Blue, and Solstice Blue
These were the “early birds” of my sweet pea crop this year. 🕊 I did get a later start planting them than I intended, but a lot of the varieties didn’t go on sale until Winter (we typically like to plant these in fall in our warm 9b climate). Nonetheless, we had sweet peas for Mother’s Day which was my goal 🙏🏻 thanks to these three! From left to right: Queen of Hearts, Lunar Blue, and Solstice Blue. Lunar blue was my favorite for color but had shorter stems, Queen of Hearts won for fragrance out of these three. I sourced seeds from Floret and Back to Dirt Farm .
Oban Bay, Jilly, Turquoise Lagoon, Aurora Borealis, and Dark Knight
Round 2 of my 2022 Sweet Pea Recap:
Jilly was my favorite for versatility (she even leaned a bit taupe sometimes) and stem length. Turquoise won for cool points, and Aurora Borealis just blew my socks off with how unique it was.
Photo 1 left to right: Oban Bay, Turquoise Lagoon, Jilly.
Photo 2: Turquoise Lagoon (check out that fluorescence!)
Photo 3: my favorite sweet, ruffly Jilly
Photo 4: Aurora Borealis. I didn’t tie these up well enough so had short stems but I think it was my error, not the variety.
Photo 5: Dark Knight: very cool, but difficult to use due to the color. Is it burgundy or magenta? Too complex for this designer 😆
