Sweetpeas
donutsmrs
Posts: 479
My Sweetpea haven't done well at all. Not really that many flowers, foliage not green and healthy and they have been covered in greenfly. I have had a few pickings off them and the perfume from the ones I've picked have been glorious. I've loved them, watered them, fed them and this is how they repay me. Has anyone else had the same problem. Other years they have done so well. Still, there is always next year.
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A little soap spray will sort the greenfly out, If you want to get rid of them that is.
I have to admit, my sweet peas have done really well with loads of flowers but they are starting to look quite manky and mildewed now. The greenfly have been in abundance though - my house is now full of them as they were hiding in the flowers I have been cutting!
HI Hollie Hock, a soap spray is just a small squirt of washing up liquid in to a spray bottle topped up with water. It will rid you of the greenfly and works on black fly too.
Yes, I bought two Lupins home from a little shop a couple of months ago, potted them up and noticed they had greenfly on two of their stems. I used the soap spray and they went straight away (within a few hours you'll notice them turn from green little things to black specks).
I always use the spray now as it's such an easy way to get rid of them.
donutsmrs-mine didn't do well at all. October sown one's, went through the winter and were looking fab in the spring, best I'd ever grown but I had so much other stuff to plant out by mid spring they'd become a tangled mess. Untangled some, but they never really recovered and when the flower stems started to grow curly, as they were grown to cut I gave up, composted them and planted something else in their place.
May sow them again in October for next year as I've some seeds left but the jury's still out on that one.
Hi, Hollie - I use garlic or seaweed spray (along with other stuff) to deter pests like slugs/snails, green/blackfly in the garden only because one year,to much detergent was put into a spray used, in an attempt to kill blackfly on a blossom tree, the tree nearly died, hence, soapy spays aren't used in Zoomers garden any more although washing up water is poured on the floor of the GH
Yes, do be careful with how much soap you use, you really only need a little squirt. As a rough estimate I'd say no more than a teaspoon of washing up liquid to a pint of water. I've read that some people use old washing up water once they've finished the dishes.