Abundantly flowering sweet peas are an attractive addition to any cottage garden. So that the plants continuously sprout new flowers, it is important to clean them out regularly in the summer months. How you have to proceed with the pruning also depends on whether you are cultivating a real or a perennial vetch in your garden.
The beautiful vetch makes a good cut flower
The cut of the sweet pea (Vicia)
Sweet peas make excellent cut flowers for the vase. The repeated cutting of some flowering shoots is beneficial for the abundance of flowers because the plant is stimulated to drive many new flowers.
If sweet peas grow too tall or grow sparsely, you can cut the summer bloomers as follows:
- Carry out a topiary in the morning hours, during which all disturbing shoots are removed.
- Always cut just above an outward-facing bud.
- Everything that has faded and dried out is consequently cleaned off in order to stimulate the formation of flowers. This also prevents seed formation, which costs the plant a lot of energy.
Vicia thrives as an annual perennial that needs to be resown every year. In autumn, the plant is therefore cut back completely and the rootstocks are dug up.
If you want to grow or sow vetches for the coming garden year, you should not remove all faded blossoms in early autumn. Allow the elongated pods to ripen until they begin to open laterally. Now you can remove the seeds from these cuttings, let them dry on a piece of kitchen paper and keep them until next spring.
Cut sweet peas (Lathyrus).
You should also regularly cut out faded and withered shoots of the perennial vetch. Not cutting back too much in the summer months stimulates the growth of the perennial plant, which then thrives particularly beautifully and bushily.
Since the perennial vetch sprouts every year, it is radically cut back to about ten centimeters above the ground in autumn or spring. We prefer spring pruning because the dead branches provide natural protection against the cold. In mild regions, you can even save yourself additional winter protection with brushwood.
tips
If possible, cut vetch for the vase in the morning, when the dew has just evaporated and the flowers are just beginning to open. They are then particularly durable.