Grow your Own Sweet Peas, Feb. 20, 6-8 pm $95

It’s time to seed Sweet Peas and other cool season annuals! These are the girls that only bloom for one season but are tough enough to take the cold temps this time of year and we’ll be talking about this whole group at the workshop. Our unheated hoophouse if full of these beauties that we planted in November and they’ve made it down to 3° with no problem. Some of the cool season annuals are snapdragons, nigella, poppies, agrostemma, campanula, and my favorite to grow from seed, – sweet peas! I used to grow sweet peas outside and up a fence post in front of the chicken coop at Aunt Willie’s and they did fine.

Sweet Peas hold a magic all their own. The flower our grandmothers grew with fragrance like a little touch of heaven are easy to grow if we just get them off to a good start. . .  and that means seeding trays now and transplanting out while temps are still cool. In this workshop we’ll teach you what we’ve learned in 20 years of growing sweet peas through trial and lots of errors but always with beautiful results. In addition to detailed learning about this crop complete with handouts, each joining us will seed a tray of 72 sweet peas to take home and will also see the fall planted crop in the hoop house, and visit other beds with other supports we’re experimenting with. Weather permitting we will take a look in the unheated hoop to see sweet peas that were transplanted in November and might transplant outside a few sweet peas that I started indoors in early January.

There will be lots of discussion of how to be successful growing these cool loving, fragrant beauties that will include:

• Spencers, Grandiflora, Royal, Early Multiflora (winter elegance, spring sunshine)
• Pests of sweet peas
• Soak or nick seeds or no. Pinch or no.
• Seeding in trays vs direct seeding and timing for each
• Best temps for germination, growing on, and and growing after transplant
• Caring for your seed tray.
• Bed preparation – composting, fabric?
• Transplanting seedlings into the ground and watering-in
• Types of support
• Caring for plants after transplanting – watering, fertilizing
• Harvesting for cuts or for seed

We will meet at Aunt Willie’s house, 207 Bruce Doan Rd., Blountville, TN, 37617. It’s the house on the corner just as you turn onto Bruce Doan. Registration cannot be refunded but we will meet rain or shine. See below for more details. Space is limited. See below for more details.