there is no more fragrant flower!
Sweet Peas! Everyone’s fragrant favorite and one of the founding flowers of Aunt Willie’s. Even before we grew them up trellises in the hoop we gathered them from the roadside ditches in front of Aunt Willie’s house where the old perennial varieties grew wild. We sold them at the Farmer’s Market in pint jars for $5/jar with the warning, “they won’t last long but aren’t they wonderful!”
cool season mix
These warm early February temps have us thinking Spring and while cold will return, we can actually do more now than just think Spring. So, we’re hosting our first ever “Grow your Own Sweet Peas” workshop, Thursday, February 20th. You’ll learn all about late winter growing and will seed a 72 tray of sweet peas (and maybe another hardy annual or two) that you can then plant out into your garden/field in March for blooms in May. You don’t need lights or heat to grow sweet peas and we’ll provide everything you need at the workshop with suggestions of supports you can create to grow “up” your plants.
We’ll share what we’ve learned through 20 years of growing and also what I learned last winter in Sweet Pea School taught by Marryn Mathis of The Farmhouse Flower Farm. Marryn’s book, Sweet Pea School will be coming out this month and fingers crossed I’ll have a copy by the workshop! Her farm, her flowers, and her spirit are wonderful and she’s a farmer you will love following.
While I’d love to have you attend our workshop, if you have just a bit of experience growing, now’s the time to order cold hardy seeds and start them indoors on your own so you can plant them out late March or early April. Other cold lovers that you can start from seed include snapdragons, poppies, corn cockle, campanula, bachelor buttons, and so many more. A good resource to guide you through the process is Lisa Ziegler’s book Cool Flowers. Lisa and I served on the board of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and she is a wealth of practical information.
sweet peas, snapdragons, and campanula
Some flowers can be direct sown in February/March in these here parts and I’ll share insights on those in a blog post soon. Just remember seeds sown now must be cold hardy – hold on to those zinnia seeds for a couple more months! So I guess what I’m saying is, while we’ve still got a bit of winter ahead of us, the promise of spring is just a seed packet away!
planting lisianthus in March
And for any of you near the Nashville/Franklin, TN area, I’ll be speaking on Growing Lisianthus at the Pick Tennessee Conference, an annual agricultural conference providing educational and networking opportunities for producers from across the state of Tennessee. I’ll be speaking Saturday morning but there are flower topics throughout the 3 day conference. Would love to see you there! And while lisianthus are cold hardy, don’t get brave and try to grow them from seed. . . they’re tricky little fellers!
Now get out and enjoy this beautiful day and thing Spring . . . and think Sweet Peas! And if you missed it, Click here for the Sweet Pea workshop.
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