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Sweet Peas not flowering Please help!
megan23
Posts: 10
Hi there, I'd really appreciate some advice. I'm UK based and my sweet peas are not flowering yet - the buds go dry/die and the leaves at the bottom don't look healthy. They are either yellowy/a bit stripey (took most of those leaves off yesterday) and many have white marks on them. But the green foilage further up keeps growing and looks fairly healthy. I have never grown sweet peas before so am very much an amateur!
They are in 2 x 25 litre pots, I used John Innes no.2 soil (loam based with less than 50% peat). I used snail bait & a few weeks after planting them a weak solution of Tomorite on them. There are about 12 plants in each pot (probably too many I know) mostly in groups of 2 or 3 (one has 4
). I've looked online but unsure if its the heat damaging them (they're in all day sun, though I have been shading them with the parasol recently with this intense heat), or if its from too much watering, not enough watering, root burn from too many plants, damage from the Tomorite, or the wrong type of soil! I water them every day at night which seems like enough but its hard to tell when they're in big pots. I'm very sad that they're not flowering! Can my sweet peas be saved?! Many thanks for any advice in advance! Megan
They are in 2 x 25 litre pots, I used John Innes no.2 soil (loam based with less than 50% peat). I used snail bait & a few weeks after planting them a weak solution of Tomorite on them. There are about 12 plants in each pot (probably too many I know) mostly in groups of 2 or 3 (one has 4
). I've looked online but unsure if its the heat damaging them (they're in all day sun, though I have been shading them with the parasol recently with this intense heat), or if its from too much watering, not enough watering, root burn from too many plants, damage from the Tomorite, or the wrong type of soil! I water them every day at night which seems like enough but its hard to tell when they're in big pots. I'm very sad that they're not flowering! Can my sweet peas be saved?! Many thanks for any advice in advance! Megan 0
Posts
A soil based medium won't have enough food in it, and it would have been better to have had some compost mixed through it, as it's a bit heavy as a growing medium for small plants, and they may have struggled a bit early on. They do need plenty of water, but that type of medium will tend to hold on to it a bit too much, so again - young plants could have been a bit soggy, and may just have grown weakly.
Don't water unless they actually need it, so if they're still damp in the top inch or so, just leave them.
You could move them into a bit of shade too, so that they aren't getting too much sun. Hours of really hot sun is hopeless for them, despite the usual info saying that they grow in full sun.
I use turf in the bottom of my pots, or some garden soil, and then compost with a little slow release food. A layer of manure instead, if available, at the bottom of the pot is also great.
That does them until they start getting buds/flowers, and I then feed them every week or two with tomato food. That works well.
Should have added - the leaf damage isn't anything to worry about - they do get damage from leaf miner, and the foliage gets tatty as they grow too.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
The soil would probably have been ok if the seedlings were healthy. Good compost alone is fine to produce a decent crop, but a potting on compost isn't really hearty enough for something which is needing to grow and produce a lot of flowers, especially ones which weren't at their best.
These cream ones were sown in early April, and just kept ticking over until they were big enough to plant out later in May. Mine would normally be a bit slower than that, but we had a record breaking April, so they grew more quickly. This was taken last week
Just keep them out of that severe sun for now, and take off those dried up buds. Just keep an eye on the watering too.
Hopefully, you'll get some new ones. Wait until you get a few more fresh buds and then you can start giving them a little tomato food now and again to promote the flowers.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Wait until you have some new growth and buds.
Too hot and too dry is what they hate, and that's why they have some mildew, although that's quite common anyway.
If plants were available in June in a commercial outlet - they would have been starving, not healthy.
Just how much water do you give each pot when you water? They need at least a big canful for pots that size.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...