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Sweet peas are one of the unbridled joys of the spring and early summer garden. Their delightful scent and blooms repay in spades any early effort you put in One of my successes last year was a 50p packet of sweet pea seeds. Humble they may have been, yet they transformed the garden, allotment and every windowsill I could find on which to sit little jam jars of picked flowers. Sweet peas need a little heat to get going – a warm windowsill is perfect. Aim to sow six to eight weeks before the last frost, so now is just about perfect. If you miss this, wait until at least mid-spring, when the soil warms up. Both are fine policies, but sow now and you'll pick earlier. After a warm start, they need to be grown hard – try a cold frame, an unheated greenhouse or porch, though throw a little fleece over if the night falls below -5C. Offer enough light so they can grow upright and strong, and that is that. Any sort of cosseting and you will get weak plants. Soaking seed or nicking the seed coat can do more damage than good, so don't bother. Instead, concentrate on the pot. Sweet peas love a long root run. You can buy root trainers, which are hinged long plastic pots that fit into seed trays, or you can recycle: toilet roll tubes, newspaper folded into a pot, or a long food container (Pringles pots work a treat). Once your seedlings have four true leaves, kick them out to cooler conditions. If you grow your seedlings hard, they tend to produce side shoots naturally. If you find yourself with leggy growth, nip out the top two leaves when you have four or more true leaves, to encourage bushy growth. When the risk of frost has passed, they're ready to plant out: a sunny day in late March for those down south, sometime in April for those farther north. Add a generous helping of homemade compost or well-rotted manure to the planting hole – the trick is to get those roots running as deep as possible – then mulch to retain moisture and save on watering. Slugs, mice and birds can all be a pain. Net, trap and discourage as best you can. You can grow sweat peas in pots, but make sure you use dwarf varieties and remember that they're thirsty, hungry plants. In fact, deciding which variety of sweet pea to grow for anywhere is almost harder than growing the things. For first-timers, the bicolour heirlooms, 'Cupani' (maroon and violet) or 'Painted Lady' (white and pink), are reliable and smell divine – last year's 50p pack was Thompson & Morgan's 'Heirloom Bicolour Mixed', which I'd gladly grow again – while a flick through Roger Parsons' catalogue (rpsweetpeas.co.uk) will have you dreaming of turning the entire garden over to these beauties. Alys Fowler
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