Second-chance sweet peas

Glorious garden sweet peas. Picture supplied

From harvesting and planting to stopping pest and disease cycles, there is still lots to keep you busy out in your gardens during mid-winter.

If you missed your opportunity to sow seeds of beautiful sweet peas during autumn, you can still grow this simply delightful flower by planting seedlings.

Look out for punnets of sweet peas in your local garden centre. For a pot or hanging basket, choose a dwarf variety which is compact and bushy and for growing up a trellis or tripod, plant taller growing sweet peas. They’re ideal for covering a not-so-attractive fence.

Watch out for snails and slugs, which can target delicate young sweet pea seedlings. A light scattering of Yates Blitzem Snail & Slug Pellets around the base of the seedlings will help protect them from damage.

To encourage healthy stem and leaf growth as well as lots of beautiful flowers, feed sweet peas each fortnight with a potassium enriched liquid fertiliser like Yates Thrive Roses & Flowers Liquid Plant Food.

To keep sweet peas flourishing, remove spent flowers regularly, which not only helps to keep the plants looking tidy but will also help to prolong the flower show. Don’t forget to cut a bunch of sweet pea flowers for a vase, as they make a gorgeous and scented indoor display.

As sweet pea plants age they can be susceptible to powdery mildew, which is a disease that appears as a greyish white talcum powder-like covering over the leaves. Infected leaves will gradually yellow and die. Powdery mildew can be controlled with fortnightly sprays of Yates Rose Gun, which contains a systemic fungicide that moves through the plant’s sap system to target common diseases like powdery mildew.

Frost protectionWinter frosts can damage tender plant foliage and shoots, particularly if unseasonable weather has resulted in out-of-season or unusual growth.

There are a few strategies that can be used to help protect vulnerable growth from frost. Move potted plants to a protected area such as on a veranda and drape frost or shade cloth over sensitive plants. Applying Yates Thrive Natural Seaweed Tonic can also aid plant recovery from stress conditions like frost.

Don’t prune off any damaged foliage until the risk of frost has passed, as the damaged leaves can help protect the rest of the plant.

Clever cloningDo you have a favourite deciduous shrub or vine growing in your garden that you would like to clone? Well, this winter, try your hand at taking some ‘hardwood’ cuttings. It’s easier than you think!

Hardwood cuttings is the technical sounding term for taking pieces of stems from plants like hydrangeas, wisteria and grapevines during winter and encouraging them to grow their own roots.

Here’s a step by step guide to growing new plants from hardwood cuttings:

Choose leafless stems around 0.75 – 1cm thick and cut off 15 – 18cm long pieces.The top cut should be just above a node (the bud where the new leaves develop) and the bottom cut just below a node.Make a slanted cut at the top so you can remember which way is up.Dip the bottom ends of the cuttings into Yates Clonex Red Rooting Hormone Gel. Clonex Red contains a concentrated plant hormone which helps promote root development as well as sealing and protecting the cutting.Insert the dipped ends of the cuttings into pots filled with Yates Black Magic Seed Raising Mix and keep in a cool, sheltered, well-lit position.Once roots are well established, individual cuttings can be transplanted into small pots to grow until they are big enough to be planted out into the garden.