Sweet Peas with Roger Parsons

 S2 EP01 The Cut Flower Podcast

Sweet Peas with Roger Parsons

SPEAKERS

Roger Parsons, Roz Chandler

Roz Chandler  00:16

Hello, I'm Roz Chandler from Field Gate Flowers.

You were listening to the cut flower podcast. This is for you if you want to learn more about growing your own cut flowers. We’ll cover loads of subject’s things like siting a patch, your soil, manure and compost, seeds and germination, perennials and biannuas,l annuals, foliage and so much more. We'll have some exciting guests along the way. Thank you very much for listening. 

Today, I'm delighted to welcome Roger Parsons of Roger Parsons Sweet peas. I'm sure our listeners are very excited to learn around these lovely special flowers. So welcome, Roger. So, first of all, perhaps you can tell us a little bit about your business Roger and how you got into sweet peas? What was it that started your journey?

Roger Parsons  01:10

Oh, goodness. Yeah, you start with a hard question. I can remember growing sweet peas as a child, going down to Woolworths with my mother and buying a collection of six varieties of sweet peas and growing them. But I think I got seriously interested in growing them about 40 years ago, yes it's coming up for 40 years now. And I was living in Wiltshire at the time, and our local flower show had Sweet Pea classes. And although I used to grow lots of different things in those days, I was intrigued by the sweet peas, there's something about the fabulous range of colours, wonderful fragrance. But there is something about the poise and the elegance of the flowers. They had a sort of delicacy, a grace if you like that I'm still in love with.

Roz Chandler  02:20

But Roger, you're very modest. Haven't you got the National collection with you? Tell us a little bit about that. 

Roger Parsons  02:41

In about 1998, I became concerned about the fact that some very good sweet pea varieties were kind of falling out of commerce, no longer available to people and just disappearing, ceasing to exist. So I started a seed bank, then I learnt how seeds could be kept.

And then in 2005, I was able to take early retirement from from my work in local government parks management. And so the collection was recognised by plants heritage as a national collection. And I've been dealing with it ever since I suppose it gave me the time to grow all these sweet peas. And but as far as the business goes, I still regard this more as a hobby that's gotten out hand than a business. I don’t feel it's a business in that sense. Just, you know, I'm just doing what I enjoy.

Roz Chandler  04:13

It's a business Roger definitely, definitely.  Tell me when you mentioned  sweet peas, and another variety Lathyrus, what's the difference? Because I think there's some confusion between the two.

Roger Parsons  04:24

I'm sure there is not least because one of the people sometimes refer to the perennial sweet pea. Yeah. Now this is this is a commonly known species Lathyrus Lactifolia -  I prefer to call it the everlasting pea because it's not a sweet pea. And they say there's about 160 species and last year, the RHS very kindly published a book produced by myself and Greg Kenicer, from Edinburgh Botanic Garden, on Lathyrus, and it covers all the species. So if people want to know more about them, that's a good reference source.

Roz Chandler  05:42

Yeah, I did see that book on your website, because I do have your other book. So I saw it today. But wow, I would like that one too. Because actually, the book your first book that I've got on sweetpeas, I kept in a polytunnel when it got very wet and very mouldy. And now I can hardly turn the pages. So it gives me a good excuse to buy it again. So I must be a great customer buying it, because I keep referring it to it. Sweet Pea an essential guide, I think your books called isn't it?

Roger Parsons  06:10

Well, that's the one that you've got at the moment. And yeah, and if you want to grow sweet peas, then that's the thing, the, the the new book that I referred to, which is called Lathyrus, a complete guide. That is very much a botanical work, there is an enormous amount on the history and development of what you might call the evolution of the sweet pea. There's quite a comprehensive review of varieties. But in terms of how to grow them, the  Essential Guide is is the better book if you like, and it's cheaper.

Roz Chandler  06:57

Brilliant. Also, you know, a lot of our listeners are cut flower growers, obviously, and ask what Sweet Pea suits me. I mean, there's Spencer's and grandiflora  and old fashioned. I mean, I think when you start out in your journey, it's a bit overwhelming. Where should people start?

Roger Parsons  07:15

I can understand why people are overwhelmed. There's so many different types, aren't there? I mean, yeah, if you're growing for cut flowers, what do you want, you want, you want a good vase life, you want long stems. So  to get good stem length you really want the, the Spencer type, those, those have the big frilly flowers, and the longest stems come with size, if you like, yeah. So that to get so to get good Vase life. I mean, it's it's an unfortunate fact that sweet peas don't tend to have a great vase life and the hotter the weather, you know that the quicker they go over. But if you if you get the Multiflora or Spencer's, then they have more flowers on the stem. And you you you tend to get a longer vase life accordingly. So whereas your typical Spencer Sweet Pea has four flowers on the stem, you can get multi flowers, which have I mean, there's a couple of varieties come out in the last 20 years that that have up to 15 flowers on the stem, I'm thinking here of Aphrodite, which is right. Now a lot of a lot of cut flower growers like those. But to my mind, they they they've got just too many flowers, they, they that they look more like Gladiolia than sweet peas in some respects, you know that. And you tend to the individual flowers are a little bit small and they they tend to be a bit you've got irregular gaps between the flowers. Whereas the the the standard multi florias tend to have maybe 6,7,8 flowers on a stem and they can be a bit gappy as well so so my very favourite type which doesn't have a name, I mean, call them semi molten flow if you like but yet to mine Mind you, the ideal blooms and certainly what I'm breeding for a lot of what Keith hammock New Zealand has been breeding for is to produce five or six flowers on the stem. So you get the longer vase life. But you've still got that beautiful form and symmetry that you get with with the standard Spencer varieties.

Roz Chandler  10:31

And I always hedge my bets Roger. So we're doing about 500 sweetpeas here on the farm, so and I always buy your Spencer varieties, I have to say, and I buy them annually. And we've we've started growing them in the tunnel. So that moves us on to growing. We've, we've started them now in a tunnel and it's quite hot in there. So we're moving them out during the day and giving them a little bit of air and talking very nicely to them and sweeping them a bit making sure their stems are nice and strong. Have you got any tips on growing? Are you  meant to grow them in the autumn ?Oh, no, you can do them in the spring.. You can do them from Autumn all the way through to the spring. And it's all quite muddy. 

Roger Parsons  11:17

Yeah, it's muddy. You're absolutely right. I think a lot depends on where you are. You know, if you're growing in southern England, the Midlands, South Wales maybe the Republic of Ireland. I'll ignore North America for now. Well, it's it's quite complex in terms of microclimate zones. Yes. Yeah. So, so yeah. So So basically, they, you know, the southern half of the United Kingdom or the British Isles shall we say. Then you can sow in the autumn. And the advantage of sowing in October is that they will germinate quite readily. Even outside. Certainly no problem in the cold frame, cold greenhouse, something like that. You can so to get to get early blooms and and, and the longest stems and the biggest flowers. So anytime up till February. The advantage of sowing in October is that you don't need any warmth at night. Once you get into November and through the winter months, then they need a little bit of warmth to help with germination. So the October sowing really allows you to overcome not having to give them any heat for germination. Now, if you're if you're further north, and then you might want to save if you're in the north of England, say Northern Ireland, something like that.  You probably want to sow at the beginning of January, something like that. So you can't avoid needing a little bit of warmth, just still have germinated get them out in a cold once they've germinated but you can't avoid that. And, and if you go further north again, Scotland, for example, the traditional date for sowing then was the 14th of February- St Valentines. Wow. So, the reason that you can't sow in the autumn, if you're in the north of Scotland, is because the winter light levels are not good enough for the plants to overwinter. There is a way of overcoming it with light levels with supplementary lighting, but really to make it simple and straightforward. It's better to sow in the late winter, early spring there's no reason why if people want a later crop, there's no reason why you can't so after February you know gardeners tend to so March April time slips like the problem with that is you never quite get stems as long as you don't get the same standalone. Fine for garden display but not really for cut flower grows.

Roz Chandler  14:37

Yeah, so yeah, that's exactly right. We've tried that. Exactly that. And it's we've always we're in the Midlands, so we're really fortunate. So we grow from now all the way through, and we will do another early spring sowing. And we'll get them all out and for me, they were amazing  this year, people said oh, you're worried about watering and so on. We kept the water levels up, and they were phenomenal. 

Roger Parsons  15:02

Excellent. I think a lot of people did it's, which is very encouraging makes up for the ones that aren't so good.

Roz Chandler  15:10

So talking about sweet peas, and once we've obviously germinated and getting them out, how do we care for them? That's another confusion or these tendrils? And do you pinch them out? Or do you leave them? And do they go get rather entwined with each other? And what should you do with them?

Roger Parsons  15:26

Yeah, there's there's basically two methods of supporting them, you can either grow them as, as cordon plants, bit like, people may be familiar with growing tomatoes as gardens. And this is where you just take one stem for each plant  up a tall cane, bamboo, eight foot bamboo canes. Or if you're growing undercover, you can get away with using strings, all the strength of the plant goes into that one stem, so that so that does help give you longer stems. It gives you more control over the plants. And it does, however, involve a lot more work of tying in and removing tendrils. So as you say, the plants don't grow any better for removing tendrils, what removing the tendrils does is it saves them interfering with flowering stems to ensure that the stem stay nice and straight. That the stems will be straight quite naturally, it's only it's only if the home gets moved, you know, or, or the flowers are, are caught by something tendrils or whatever, to bend them that you then start getting bent stem so so that's the reason why tendrils are removed. So cordons, you removed the tendrils, she removed the side shoots. And then when they get to the top of the canes, you have to lower them down and take them along the ground and up another one, it's it's a lot of work. The alternative method, which certainly is the way they traditionally did it in the Netherlands is, is just to grow them naturally. And I've seen Floret do this as well  looking online, where you have just rows and rows of the plants that go in and, and you just let them do their own thing. Now that so you don't remove tendrils, you don't remove side shoots. And you just cut what you can. Now the advantage of this is, is infinitely less work. Yeah, however, you will also get an awful lot of bent flower stems, which depending on what your market is, and such like may be wasted. And actually, you also get a shorter flowering season that way that the stems will start to go shorter, quicker. And so so you know, if you're serious about having a long productive season, then then cordon growing is the way to go. Really.

Roz Chandler  18:42

Yeah, we're quite lazy. And again, it's a resource issue so we grow ours up Herras fencing, you know the old builders, fencing. And we do remove the tendrils if we've got time, and we do but we don't do the cordon method, we basically do leave them and they love Herras fencing, I don't know what it is, but they just grow really tall really lovely. And yeah, I think you're right if you're growing on a smaller scale, then taking the tender side shoots and doing cordon method is the way to go. 

Roger Parsons  19:19

There's there's one other important part of conservation that I'd like to mention we just touched on there and that's that's watering irrigation. Yeah, people often have the problem of stems going short earlier than they would wish and becoming too short for cutting. And that is purely an effective of how how wet the ground is. So the more watering you can give them, then the longer the period that the stems will stay long. Now that's that's easier said than done, depending on people's circumstances, but But yeah, hot, dry. conditions the hotter and drought is, the shorter the stems will become.

Roz Chandler  20:06

Wow, okay, I did put irrigation systems in and it was they grew fabulously. So other problems while we're on it on irrigation. Other problems obviously, when you're growing them in a germinate they become leggy. Why is that? They can be can become leggy. Yeah, they

Roger Parsons  20:25

they can do. It's a result of the plants being too warm and or not enough light. I mentioned earlier about in the north, if you're overwintering young plants, then yeah, the problem is that they will simply not get enough light,. What you want, really for your plants prior to them going out is to produce short stocky plants. So from  an October sowing, once they've germinated, they really want to be out in the cold. There are a hardy annual, they will tolerate temperatures quite happily down to minus five. You shouldn't have too many problems if it goes down to minus 10. But there's certainly we're on the south coast, I could happily keep my plants outdoors all winter. And in fact, I'm, I'm actually disappointed if at some stage in the winter, they aren't frozen solid. So yeah, although I have them in the polytunnel. I mean, it's completely ventilated and unheated. And the reason I have them in a polytunnel is simply because the quantity of plants are growing, I can't be moving them in and out according to changing weather conditions. So grow them as cold as you can, if if at some point, they they haven't frozen solid to the point of the plants actually collapsing, then I'm disappointed as I say, and they want to, you need it when they are frozen solid, you need to let them thaw out slowly but but it's toughens them up. And, and what you're looking for is, is, is strong sturdy growth, you're not looking for elongated growth during the during the winter period, it's when they're in their flowering positions in the spring, that's when you that's when you want the you know, the

Roz Chandler  22:45

right I am going to put mine outside because I am doing the move in move out. So I've been having them in out during the day and enjoying the night and it's dropping to about five degrees at the moment. So I think now from what you've said, because that was a nice little stocky plants. I'm just gonna leave them outside.

Roger Parsons  23:05

Yeah, it's very mild at the moment and frost won't hurt that hurt them. What can be damaging is is cold, strong winds, right from the north or the east. So apart but that's the only time they need shelter. Really. Right. I mean, even snow they're quite happy under snow. That's no problem at all. It actually keeps them keeps them it's like a blanket of warmth for them, you know,

Roz Chandler  23:32

wow, let Gosh, that's exactly what I'm going to  do. So I'm going to be hard sometimes we're a little bit soft with our  flowers, but maybe we need to just get a bit harder. One other thing that people have asked me about sweet peas is what should you do if your sweet peas grow tall but they don't flower what's happening there

Roger Parsons  23:54

can be a number of of reasons for this. The most common one is if they're if they're in too shady a position they want to be in full sun really, if they're not getting a bit ly then then they'll grow quite happily but but they they're just not not encouraged to flower the the other quite common reason for that is if people have given too much nitrogen to the plants you know we're often encouraged to to put plenty of well rotted manure or garden compost into the into the ground and to work that in and to mulch them and you can actually overdo this if you if you're not careful you know if you give them too much so I mean we haven't said anything about feeding and such like but but but but but a phone Your feed was sulphate of potash or, or else touching the ground before planting out with with sulphur to potash. So they've got plenty of potassium now will will, will encourage flowering.

Roz Chandler  25:14

Okay. And is that the only feeding you need to do for sweet peas?

Roger Parsons  25:20

Well, they are a legume, so they fix their own nitrogen. So if you've got reasonably good soil, you you shouldn't need to give them nitrogen for growth, the potassium does help, I would say is essential. And then it depends on your, your soil. I give mine a foliar feed once a fortnight with micronutrients, you know, the trace elements that that are missing from the soil present. The other thing I've really I never used to feed them at all up until a couple of years ago, but I've really been one over two weekly  feeding now. And I do that with something called SP, plant invigorator.

Roz Chandler  26:18

I bought over to that as well. 

Roger Parsons  26:21

And, you know, I was encouraged by a commercial grower to start using it two years ago. And you know, it's absolutely wonderful, I've no idea what's in it, but the plants grow better. And more importantly, it's a biostimulant it's so it helps with their natural resistance to, to pests and diseases. And the other thing I, you know, I have to confess I'm not an organic grower. And, you know, results are all important to me. And so the other thing I do once a fortnight is, is treat with a product that basically it's a blue liquid, it looks like copper sulphate. It's very high in copper and sulphur. And that's wonderful for I just, I just don't see powdery mildew as a result of protective spraying with them. I think it's mainly the sulphur that does it.

Roz Chandler  27:24

Now, lots of people were talking about SP invigorator, two years ago, I'd never heard of it. And now everybody I talked to has heard about it. So I'm a bit of a convert. So it's on my list for sure. To give it a go. SP invigorator

Roger Parsons  27:37

Yeah. Yeah, I think everyone should be.

Roz Chandler  27:42

So I think you're the president of the National sweet pea society as well. Because how do you fit all this in? So tell us a bit about the national sweet pea society?

Roger Parsons  27:52

Yes. Well, the National sweet pea society has been around since 1900. It's, it has changed if you like over the decades and such like, and certainly throughout my life, most interest has been in exhibiting sweet peas, you know, local flower shows and national shows and such like. But there's much more to it than that. We've certainly at our shows, moved away from the traditional sort of rows of vases, with balloons standing up right in them standing to attention. That's it, we're waiting to be judged. Too much more decorative stuff. So yeah, I'm one of many people that that are far, far more interested in, in what you can create in terms of bowls and baskets and other other attractive works, associating with other flowers with other types of foliage. And in recent years, we've we've introduced some more purely floral art classes into the show. I say we've introduced some they used to have them decades ago, and they've fallen out of favour and you know, so yeah, so so we're just all about encouraging people to, to enjoy sweet peace as much as we do and to learn how to how to do the best they can can with with them. Membership is is very reasonable. We do some excellent publications and yeah, people are serious about being sweetpeas. I would, I would encourage you to do that. And in fact, I would go further than that and say we we we need to encourage more cut flowers grow was to be involved to to stand up for, you know, the decorative side of it rather than if you like the pure flower.

Roz Chandler  30:01

I chose to go over and join you, Roger. So, thank you very much for joining us today. Where can people find you? I mean, I know I've obviously looked at your new website. And you've got a YouTube channel, which I've also watched. Where else can people find you? Yeah,

Roger Parsons  30:17

well, we're very responsive to sort of, we're on Instagram and Facebook and all the other social media things. But yet the website has, sadly, we're not open to the public, you know, we do sometimes have open days, but when not normally to the public. So yeah, the website RP sweetpeas.com, is a good first port of call and, and you know, you can follow links and such like from then

Roz Chandler  30:50

I will put all your social media channels and your website in the show notes so people can find you. So they can come over and have a look and your YouTube channel is a wealth of information. And also, I would definitely recommend your book, I should I can say, buy another one because the other one, I can't turn the pages off. It's always a reference source. It's always like, Oh, okay. And I think you can continually keep learning I think every day's a school day. Honestly, even if you've been growing like we have sweet peas for 12 years, you still I still learn I've just learned now what I'm going to do with my sweet peas today. So thank you very much for joining us, Roger. Our next episode next Friday, I'll be talking all about what it takes to be a flower farmer, my top 10 tips. Don't miss it. Subscribe, and we'd be really grateful for a review. And I will see you next Friday. Thank you for listening. This has been the cut flower podcast. Please do join us on our Facebook group that cut flower collective for lots more hints and tips. Thank you