Gardening Tips and Advice Week 9

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14 April 2021

Gardening week 9, photo of sweet peas

Throughout lockdown it's important to get outdoors, and keep the mind occupied, a great way to combine the two is by doing some gardening.

This week Horticulture lecturer Joanna Loane has provided us with some helpful advice on looking after sweet pea seedlings.

A few weeks ago, we demonstrated how to sow sweet pea in cardboard tubes to germinate early indoors before putting them out into containers or the ground in the garden.

As you can see from the photo, the seedlings are doing really well! As they get taller, it is a good idea to use something like a wooden kitchen skewer in each tube to support the seedlings as they grow upwards, this helps to avoid them getting tangled up in each other.

As sweet pea's are climbers, their instinct is to keep growing upwards, this will result in them being nice and tall, however, tall leggy plants will not produce many flowers. To make sure we get the most from out plants, when the seedlings have reached the stage that you can see in the photographs, or when they have about three sets of leaves, it is a good idea to cut off the growing tips. This will encourage them to produce side shoots, and ultimately will be bushier fuller plants that will produce more flowers.

Watch this space for further instructions about planting these sweet pea outdoors within the next few weeks!


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