Hi Sibe,

I have little room left in my garden to grow any new plants so I am thinking about growing some sweet peas in pots. Is this possible and if so how would I go about it?

Thanks,
Marcy

Our Gardening Expert replies:

Hi Marcy,

Yes, you certainly can grow Sweet Peas in pots - provided, of course, that the pots are large enough!

Sweet Peas are quite greedy feeders so would need quite a large container filled with a good quality compost such as John Innes No 2 as well as needing additional liquid feeding once they'd started to flower. You need large containers for another reason, though - the top growth will weigh quite a lot so if windy conditions came along the pots may overbalance. You can get round this by inserting a framework of long canes into the ground (maybe through gaps in paving stones if you've no actual soil available) and if these are securely fixed and the plants encouraged to climb round them from adjacent pots, this could work quite well.

The other problem with growing them in pots is that, if these are in full sun, as they often would be with Sweet Peas, they could get quite hot and dry in the summer so you would need to water often and if possible try to keep the pots in shade and the plants in sun.

Sweet Peas in pots would never be as floriferous or grow as high as they would from a good position in the ground, but you should certainly be able to get an acceptable display.

Happy gardening!

Sibe

For more advice on planting pots see Window Boxes, Container Planting, Hanging Baskets and Adding Colour to a Balcony.


The above picture is of Everlasting Sweet Pea 'Lathyrus latifolius White Pearl', available from Crocus.'