A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Plants and Flowers Forum Sweet Pea thing

Am I the only gardener in North America who grows healthy, beautifully colored sweet peas WHICH ARE UNABLE TO PRODUCE A WHISPER OF THAT HEAVENLY FRAGRANCE among them? Is this an American thing...a midwestern thing...an add or subract thing? Help, I miss my childhood.

bruce

Very strange bruce, have you always planted the same ones? I plant sweet peas and they smell wonderful. Never heard of the non scented ones before.

Cultivated varieties of sweetpeas have no fragrance. When bred to produce a quality such as long stems or one color, fragrance is lost.

More unlikely, but possible, is that your sweetpeas are getting heavy doses of nitrogen. Over-use of nitrogren causes flowers and herbs to lose fragrance.

Look for species or old-fashioned varieties of sweetpeas. These will usually be multi-colored with short stems but will have that wonderful sweet fragrance you remember.

For healthy fragrant plants don't plant sweetpeas in the same place two years in a row. They are very heavy feeders and will quickly deplete soil nutrients.

Hmmm, I always just plant mine in containers and they are also from seedlings not seeds. So I don't know exactly what variety they were...