We've just walked through our sweet pea trial area for probably the last time this year - we now need the space for other crops - and the results have once again been fascinating......
We had real concerns early in the summer as the very hot June weather almost ruined the trial. An increase in watering and slowing down the feed for a few days coincided with cooler days and the plants quickly picked up. They flowered alsmost as strongly as last year although this was delayed by about 10 days, this resulted in us having better flowers in August than ever before!
Highlights of the trial were as follows:
Dragonfly - a very interesting new intermediate variety, shadeds of pink and lavender and good scent.
Alan Roberts - this was it's best year, seems to give high quality blooms for longer than almost all others
Sylvia Moore - we think this is as good a pink as any - exhibition potential
Anna's Hope - a lovely new mid blue, bred by Andrew Bean
Apricot Queen - the most popular variety at Sandringham -we expect to have new seed from New Zealand in 2011
Patio Perfect - was really good in patio pots and flowered strongly.
White Frills - the best white by far
Ethel Grace - a week later to flower but gave great exhibition quality stems
Virtually all others (we trial all we sell) performed as expected and we had several very exciting new seedlings that have not even been named yet!
We'll miss the trial now it's going and will have to wait until next year for those armfuls of sweet peas that we've enjoyed taking home!
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