INTRODUCTION 3 



raised every year by market growers, blooms sent to the 

 markets always meet with an appreciative demand and 

 remunerative sale. It is, of course, impossible to even 

 approximately estimate how many Sweet Pea seeds are 

 annually distributed in this country, but facts that are well 

 within our personal knowledge go far to prove that the 

 quantity is probably in excess of 40 tons. These find their 

 way to the soil, either in the penny packets of the smaller 

 amateur or in the hundredweight lots such as are purchased 

 by the market growers who made a specialty of supplying 

 the markets with plants in pots in the early summer, and 

 with flowers later. Estimating an average pound of Sweet 

 Peas to contain 5000 seeds, it is not a difficult problem in 

 multiplication to ascertain that this represents 11,200,000 

 to the ton, or 448,000,000 of Sweet Pea seeds distributed 

 every year by British growers alone. Those who attempt 

 to realise what such a number really means will find it 

 impossible, but the facts are that the actual total is over, 

 rather than under, what has been stated. And still we are 

 determined to have the Sweet Pea more extensively grown 

 even than it is in present-day gardening ! 



