Hammett Sweet Peas

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I am a plant breeder. Each year I try to bring you something new, as well as offer old favourites. While there is a tendency to concentrate on floral novelty, there are other attributes to consider. The most important of these is flowering time. Sweet Peas may be classified into Winter, Spring and Summer flowering types.

Most Sweet Peas offered to the home gardener are Summer flowering. They need at least 12 hours daylight before they can flower. If sown too early in northern New Zealand the plants become very big before they flower. Winter and Spring flowering strains flower with 10 and 11 hours daylight respectively.

This year I have formulated a mixture of Winter and Spring types as the Equinox mix. If sown in March and April, these will flower during winter and spring, while if sown between November and January, the flowering season can be extended into Autumn.

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Scent is the single most important attribute of Sweet Peas. This year we see the return of the two strongest scented cultivars.
Original This is the genuine wild Sweet Pea. This stock was collected in Sicily during the 1970s. All other Sweet Peas have been developed from it.
High Scent Has been recognised as the benchmark cultivar for scent. In addition, the Royal Horticultural Society has just awarded it an Award of Garden Excellence. Spelling has varied, but will now be standardised as High Scent. Violet flush and edging on cream ground

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Lunar Sea Has pure cream wavy flowers. This is a winter/spring flowering type. Cream is a good colour to blend with others.
Equinox Is a mixture of Winter and Spring Flowering types, which will enable you to have flowers over a greatly extended season. A range of self and bicoloured types.
Pandemonium This is a purple flaked Sweet Pea where the colour occurs as stripes on both the front and rear of the petals.
Streamers Mix This is a mixture of other coloured versions of Pandemonium, including Burlesque blue, and Vaudeville pink, plus others.
Roosterville This is a smaller flowered Sweet Pea which is notable for its unusual vibrant magenta coloured flowers.
Big Blue This is a bold exhibition type blue Sweet Pea, now available as a single colour. It together with North Shore and Cocktail make up the Moody Blues mixture.

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Moody Blues A combination of three cultivars ‘North Shore’ bicolour, navy standard, violet wings, ‘Cocktail’ bicolour, maroon standard, violet wings and ‘Big Blue’ a mid-blue self. These all have large wavy flowers borne on long strong stems.
Kaleidoscope Often people are disappointed when they buy a packet of mixed Sweet Peas because the colour range is very limited. Kaleidoscope contains bicolours, reverse bicolours, flakes, stripes and self-colours in a wide range of shades and combinations.
Pathfinder This is a mixture of bicoloured flowers where the standard petal is a different colour or shade to the wing petals. Unlike earlier bicoloured mixtures, Pathfinder contains both regular and reverse bicolours.
Almost Black What more appropriate colour could a Kiwi want? The flowers are small and unwaved like ancestral sweet peas, which adds to the intensity of colour. They do appear black under artificial lights and when used in a vase with other colours.
Erewhon The original Sweet Pea is bicoloured. It has a dark maroon standard petal and paler violet wing petals. Erewhon is a reverse bicolour where the standard petal is a pale pink and the wings are a mid blue. The distinction is best seen if flowers are grown in light shade. This is a breeding break through.
Blue Shift This is a completely new development where blooms open as mauve shades, but change to a range of turquoise and ultramarine shades, which gives a bunch of flowers a unique “mother of pearl effect”.
Tropic Evening Mixed Sweet Peas are usually a mixture of seed of a few cultivars. Quite often the colours in such mixtures do not harmonise well. Tropic Evening is a genetically segregating mixture with a particularly pleasing tonality, which suggested its name.

You do not need to sow all your seed at the same time. If stored in a deep freeze it will keep indefinitely.
In most parts of New Zealand, best results will be obtained if seed is sown between June and October.
Sow outside in pots or where the plants are to flower. Sweet peas are cold hardy and do best grown hard in full light. If raised in pots, chose an open potting mix and plant into well drained soil. Protect from slugs and snails.

Seed is available in packets of approximately 25 seeds for $4.

Send your order (order form here) and payment together with a self-addressed (complete with your postal code) and stamped envelope ($1 stamp) to:
Dr Keith Hammett,
488c, Don Buck Road,
Massey,
Auckland 0614

Please make cheques payable to Dr Keith Hammett.

To keep things as simple as possible I will substitute a similar item if we run out.