Gardening: Forget the rain and think about sweet peas…

Early spring can be frustrating. Seeing the rain batter the hatches and bouncing across pavements when you want to be out planting.

Tolerance with the vagaries of the weather is eventually learned by most gardeners.

The good thing is that we really need the rain to soak in and train roots to go deeper which creates a healthier expressway for nutrients to travel upwards. Roses will also benefit greatly from a bit of the wet stuff, so whilst we can’t always get out nature is doing the work for us to some degree.

What it does allow us to do is brief jobs like making a sweet pea wigwam and placing other frameworks in place whilst they’ll go into the ground easily on dry days.

Make a wigwam shape out of six or eight canes and tie them at the top with string. I’m no skilled craftsman, but even I can make this robust enough to last the season.

The easiest way to grow sweet peas is to sow them where they are to grow. Don’t bother growing the ones without scent as that’s the whole point. Like a pie without the filling. Soak the seeds overnight to soften the seed coat (testa) to aid more effective germination.

Plant two seeds by pushing them just under the soil every 30cm/1ft. When they appear you can remove the weaker one and pot it up for somewhere or someone else.

You can also plant four around the base of every wigwam can and remove two (or not). They might need a head start to climb up the poles so tie them in gently with string and they’ll soon be spiralling up there towards the light.

Man aspects of gardening aren’t sophisticated or require a Masters in Plant Biology and this is one of them. When your peas are in the ground, succession sow some more in pots every two to three weeks to keep the flowers and that heady scent going all summer by replacing spent peas. If you remove the pods then the flowers will go on longer.

On the plot

The spine of any veg plot often replicates the needs of the kitchen. With that in mind it’s time to plant onion sets now.

I find making shallow furrow and planting them slightly below the level of the plateau prevents our feathered friends from inquisitively pulling them up when they’re bored. Cutting off the dry part horizontally will also help with this as they use that like string.

Plant them 8cm/3in apart and even though the onions might be smaller the yields will be greater in the long run. Cover with your organic fertiliser of choice and as long as they are counter sunk and weeded carefully so as to not disturb the shallow roots, you’ll have onions in autumn.

It’s also a good time to plant asparagus crowns if you haven’t already. Dig over a 4ft/1m across bed and whatever length you can afford and incorporate literally as much organic matter as you can afford. The bed should be raised above the rest of the plot to improve drainage.

Add pea shingle if you have clay soil to help drainage too. ‘Franklim’ ‘Lucullus’ and ‘Dariana’ are good and reliable croppers.

Create a ridge in the trench and drape the roots either side of it and cover. Keep well-watered and don’t cut any spears till next year when they become established.

Despite the weather the plot should be looking like somebody owns it by now with potatoes pushing up green translucent shoots and emerging from the soil asking to be banked up again.

Green shoots are everywhere which is often plants asking for food so use whatever mulch you have hanging around as this will keep out Jack Frost too.