486 



THE GARDEN AND FIELD. 



April, 1914 



The Winter - Flowering 

 Sweet Pea. 



The winter flowering sweet pea 

 has certainly not yet ousted its 

 later blooming brother — or should 

 it be sister — but it is coming 

 along. When first introduced to 

 Australia, it had apparently little 

 chance of suocessful rivalry for 

 the blooms, as generally grown, 

 were small and the colours un- 

 doubtedly inferior. Things have 

 mo\-ed with it since then. One 

 reason of its comparative failure in 

 its early days, and for the first 

 few years, probal^ly was that the 

 seed was " foreign," and even 

 when Australian grown, it was 

 not from thoroughly acclimatised 

 plants ; probably also, it was, as 

 a rule, sown too late, and finally 

 Australian plant breeders had not 

 had time to get to work on it. 



If and when blooms of this fami- 

 ly of sweet peas can be grown of 

 the same quality as the spring 

 flowering section there is no doubt 

 but that it will quickly surpass it 

 in popular favor, for its advan- 

 ta,ges are many and important. It 

 comes into flower in less than half 

 the time, and remains iu bloom for 

 more than twice as long. It can 

 be grown to bloom through the 

 season when even in Australian 

 gardens there is sometimes a scar- 

 city of flowers. With it, unlike its 

 rival, the hot winds of Noyember 

 and even of late October, have no 

 terrors for the grower, he will be 

 ciuite content to let them go, for 

 he will have months of bloom to 

 remember. 



Perhaps, by the way, it is just 

 because we feel that the beauty of 

 the dainty, delicate sweet pea is 

 such a fleeting pleasure that we 

 value it so highl)'. There is al- 

 ways the thought that we must 

 make the most of them, partly be- 

 cause we have waited so long to 

 greet them, and partly because we 

 know that a sudden burst of early 

 summer will put a speedy end to 

 our ])leasurc. During the last 

 three or four years these charming 

 occupants of our gardens havel been 

 immensc-lv popular, our early sum- 

 mer temperatures have been some 

 degrees below normal, and hot 

 winds conspicuous by their ab- 

 sence. There is probably more con- 

 nection between these two facts 

 than may be at once apparent. 



•Returning to our less fleeting 

 friends it is evident that by grow- 

 ing them we may have sweet peas 

 practically all the year round, 



whether this would be altogether 



desirable is a question which each 

 one can answer for himself. With 

 regard to the growing of them we 

 print the following paper, which 

 was read by Mr. H. C. Mott, at 

 the meeting of the Carnation, .Dah- 

 lia, and Sweet Tea Society, Vic- 

 toria : — 



I regard the winter flowering 

 sweet pea as undoubtedly the 

 sweet pea of the future for hot cli- 

 inates, and if recent developments 

 in the winter, or early flowering, 

 varieties are only maintained, this 

 race will lose nothing whatever by 

 comparison with the spring, Ijloom- 

 ing race. The flowering season of 

 the latest winter varieties is from 

 March to October. I have actu- 

 ally had inferior blooms in Decem- 

 ber, when the spring blooming 

 plants had been scorched away to 

 vegetable dust. Take my own ex- 

 perience in Southern Riverina last 

 season for a comparison between 

 the new race and the old. 



The winter \'arieties were sown 

 in seed boxes on January ist, 

 1913. They germinated in a week, 

 and a fortnight after this were 

 planted out, each with its ball of 

 soil, in the open. The -sunniest 

 possible position had been chosen. 

 The ground was trenched two feet 

 deep, and a very liberal allowance 

 of stable manure dug in the lower 

 i'8 inches of soil, leaving, with the 

 mound above the surface, a foot 

 of unmanured soil. The country 

 was 8 or 9 inches of loam, with a 

 large proportion of clay lower 

 down, and the line of trench ran 

 north to south. The weather in 

 February and March was intensely 

 hot ; actually unseasonably hot in 

 March. The varieties were my 

 own crosses, and I had nO' idea as 

 to what I was goingi to get m the 

 way of blooms. Before the plants 

 were a foot high, buds began to 

 form, and on March 2nd came the 

 first flower, only a single, but, 

 from its size and form, giving pro- 

 mise of good things. And the 

 promise was most liberally ful- 

 filled. Some of the plants, not- 

 alily those I afterwards named 

 Mrs. Hamilton C. Mott (and which 

 your Society, gentlemen, encour- 

 aged me by considering worthy of 

 your Certificate of Merit), shot up 

 to a height of 10 feet. The flow- 

 ers, up to three to a stem, were 

 little lacking in size, and of great 

 brilliancy in colour — a purple-blue: 

 shade ; while the length of the 

 stalks left nothing to be desired. 

 These plants— I had then three 

 varieties — bloomed riotously till 

 frost came. During the frosty 



months the blooming was not quite 

 so free, and there was not a sign 

 of a pod setting. Towards the 

 end of July, the blooming im- 

 proved again ; and in August the 

 flowers almost smothered the foli- 

 age. The flowers were shown in 

 May and June at the monthly 

 meetings of your Society. They 

 were also repeatedly on exhibition 

 in jMelboume, and on September 

 loth flowers from these six 

 months' old plants took first prize 

 at the annual show of the Albury 

 and Border Pastoral, Agricultural 

 Association. By October the 

 vines started to go off, and in No- 

 \'ember a decent bloom could not 

 be found. I thus had seven, in 

 some instances, eight, months' 

 bloom off the same plants ; had 

 only to attend to the plants for 

 two months before I obtained flow, 

 ers ; and the perfume was much 

 stronger than can be secured in 

 the spring bloomers. The sowing 

 season is from' January to early 

 spring. Seeds sown in May will 

 gi\ e blooms two months earlier 

 than the spring bloomingj vari- 

 eties. 



Now, let me say, briefly, how the 

 spring \arieties treated me. The 

 seeds v>"ere sown in seed boxes in 

 March. They were planted out in 

 pronerlv prepared trenched ground 

 in due course ; ran the gamut of 

 hungry sparrows in winter, and 

 dodged the slugs and snails some- 

 how. They bloomed with me to- 

 wards the end of October, giving a 

 proportion of fours • on 15-inch 

 stems — most excellent blooms. But 

 this happy state of affairs lasted 

 not more than 10 days ; Maud 

 Holmes had not even shown herself 

 properly. A hot spell oame on, 

 •and Clara) Curtis and SnowdonJ 

 shrivelled their petals to brown ; 

 Stirling Stent and Scarlet Emper- 

 or showed more scald than colour, 

 while the blooms and stalks of 

 Asta Ohm, Zephyr, Mrs. W. J. 

 Unwin and the others I have men- 

 tioned shrunk dishearteningly. I 

 'had waited over six months for 

 Tlowers, and after only a few 

 days' blooming a cream winter pea 

 of my own was immeasurably su- 

 perior to Clara Curtis I'- The whole 

 disi)lay of winter plants showed a 

 constitutional vigour which the 

 spring \-arieties lacked, the latter, 

 upon which so many months had 

 been wasted, being represented by 

 a shri\'ellcd wall of bloom and 

 foliage. 



vSuch, gentlemen, is the case I 

 make out for the winter or early 

 flowering sweet pea in climates 

 wherein hot spells and north winds 



