Anchorage Daily News

There is one plant you can always count on to do well no matter what the weather hereabouts, and that is the sweet pea. No wonder the English gardener refers to this flower as the Queen of Annuals and that it has been in serious cultivation, captivating gardeners around the world, for more than 300 years. And no wonder so many Southcentral gardeners plant them.

Still, in all the years I have been writing this column, I have never been asked if you can eat sweet pea pods. This is strange, too, because it turns out to be an important question. Sweet peas, Lathyrus odoratus, are poisonous, at least the flowers, seeds and pods. Obviously, then, eating them is not anything you should try.

The very fact that readers are asking questions about sweet pea pods, however, means I have failed in my mission. If you harvest every two days or so, your plants should continue to flower until the big frost and not produce pods. If you let pods form and go to seed, the plant stops producing flowers. So pick sweet pea flowers often. Again, every two or three days should keep them blooming for the rest of the year. Incidentally, if there are unopened buds on your cut stems, these will open flower as the blossoms now opened die off.

At the same time, I am getting questions from folks whose peas didn't bloom, which seems strange given the ideal sweet pea growing conditions this year's weather has provided. In every case, though, the questioner is a chemical user and had overfertilized. Not only do sweet peas do fine with just rich compost and little else, if you do feed them chemical mixes, they very often grow great leaves but darn few flowers.

What a great example of the difference between the actions of organics and chemicals. Sweet peas form a symbiotic relationship with a type of bacteria that can take nitrogen from the air and convert it into plant-usable form. These bacteria reside in nodules in the roots. As a result, sweet peas don't need the extra nitrogen supplied by chemical fertilizers. Moreover, these chemicals can reduce the number of beneficial, nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Organic microbe foods and mulches, however, increase the natural fauna and make sweet peas really perform.

OK, but if you do have pods, can you plant their seeds now to have blossoms indoors during winter? Again, a first-time question with an interesting answer: In short, forget whether your seeds are viable and if they would produce plants similar to the parent. Most of the sweet peas available are "long day-length," meaning they require lengthening days to initiate bud. So assuming your seeds are viable, you will still have to wait until next year to start them unless you can find some seed for florist's sweet peas or use lights properly.

On the other hand, you can collect seeds for use next spring. This requires letting the pods remain on the plant while they mature and dry out, when they can be collected. Unfortunately, it limits the number of blooms while the seeds ripen.

Some growers leave a few flowers on their plants at the end of the season and allow these to go to seed. These they collect or let fall to the ground to germinate and produce flowers the following year. Because of our long winters and numerous false starts to spring, sweet peas left in the garden are not a reliable method for generating flowers.

Once started, however, you can hardly stop sweet peas from growing in our cool gardens. And no matter how cool or how wet, they always seem to produce flowers if you plant them in good soil and raise them organically. Even this year, they are performing well. So no matter what the weather next year, include sweet peas in your mix.

Jeff Lowenfels is a member of the Garden Writers Hall of Fame. Reach him at gardenerjeff.googlepages.com or on the "Garden Party" radio show from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KBYR 700 AM.

Garden calendar

• Harvest: Peas, broccoli, kohlrabi, radish, cabbage and beans.

• Lawns: Don't give up yet. Cut down dandelion flowers before they go to seed. Mow between rains.

• Trees, shrubs: Plant them now. It is a great time. Don't add special soil to the hole. Instead, put 1/2 to 1 inch of compost or humus on the soil surface after planting.

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