Exhibition sweet pea seedlings.

The seed was planted last October and this is one of the Oban Bay sweet peas that survived the very cold weather. It has a pale ice blue flower.  I am keeping them fairly dry so that they do not rot off at the base.  You can see that I have pinched out the growing tip of the seedling to encourage side shoots. The growing tip is usually pinched out after two leaves have developed.   I will select one of the side shoots - probably the most vigorous one to become the main flowering stem of the plant.  

The other shoot will be removed.  I will also take off the old stem above the shoot.  Either of these side shoots will produce much better and bigger flowers than the main seedling stem.  This seedling is big enough to go out into the ground but I will leave them in the greenhouse until the middle of March.  The 3 inch pot is big enough to alow the seedling to grow much bigger than this.

The February sown sweet peas are not very big yet and I will be doing this with them probably at the end of March.

For the next stage:
http://tonythegardener.blogspot.com/2011/04/exhibition-sweet-peas-next-stage.html