Sweet peas dying too soon.

[researcher]

My sweet peas grew very well and flowered well but some started dying out too soon. I have grown sweet peas for years but this is the first time this is occurring. I am located along the coast in So. CA.

[Jangchub]

What are daytime temperatures? They like very cool nights and moderate days. My experience is anything much warmer than 70 and the sweet peas melt.

[tella.star]

best to plant the sweet peas early spring, just as the soil out in the garden starts to warm up, look for weed seedlings starting to peep through the soil, that tells you the soil is warming and moist enough, OR start indoors Feb in pots, once the seedlings are large enough to handle by the second set of true leaves, devide the seedlings into tall pots or special root trainer pots and grow them on till the soil is ready to plant them into their finnal place, say about May/June, by then you should have prepared the soil well in advance and added lots of compost, manure even better as sweet peas are hungry feeders, like watered well and you need to pinch out the growing tips as they get climbing to bush the plants out, or all the flowers will be way up top of the plants, you need to deadhead or pick the flowers constantly or the plants will go to seed very fast, also try to nip off the tendrils as they form because this uses up a lot of energy and you want flowers rather than tendrills, also the tendrils are inclined to twiast around the flower stems and bend or stunt the stem developement so you can pick nice long stems to take indoors to enjoy the sweet pea perfume

[Sat]

I'm running into the same problems in the same general area (SoCal coast). I tried growing them last summer and they died but that was because I had to go out of town for a few days and didn't water them. I planted my current batch in early March when temperatures were in the 60's and they grew very well and bloomed but are now almost completely dead (despite keeping them well watered).

Hopefully someone can shed light on this.

[Andrew Ostrander]

What are your temperatures? Peas stop flowering when it's hot. Also, did you remove all the spent blossoms? Once a sweet pea plant produces seeds, it dies.

Andrew

I'm running into the same problems in the same general area (SoCal coast). I tried growing them last summer and they died but that was because I had to go out of town for a few days and didn't water them. I planted my current batch in early March when temperatures were in the 60's and they grew very well and bloomed but are now almost completely dead (despite keeping them well watered).

Hopefully someone can shed light on this.

[mleblanca]

When I lived in Long Beach, my grandmother always planted sweet peas. She planted them in October, and by December, she always had many, many flowers, So she boxed them up and sent them by air mail ( a long time ago) to her relatives in Nebraska who were astounded by that strange place called Southern California where you had flowers for Christmas. Get "Early Flowering" types that will bloom in winter's short days. Spring/summer flowering types will not bloom until daylight is 15 hours or more, and by then it is too hot. Some "Spring Flowering" types may work also. Forget the Summer bloomers. Do as Andrew suggested and keep them deadheaded or they will stop blooming. good luck next fall Emilie NorCal