{It wasn’t until I pulled this photo into Aperture that I even noticed the little bee hovering above the tiny blossoms.}

We were gifted with a baby planting when we bought our house seven years ago. It is rather slow-growing, even more so by the enormous canopy of pecan trees over its head. Last Fall (2010) we were at last rewarded with a tree full of plums. I’m guessing all those drenching spring rains encouraged this, because our pecans were also terribly prolific during fall and winter.

I loved this tree so much I planted another in the back. I know I planted it too close to our cherry laurel, but it will be a few years before they even start competing. Sigh, such is the nature of planting trees. You really, really have to think long-term. Unless of course a storm decides to come and knock down the six-branched chinaberry that was taking over the telephone wires. (Thank you, storm, for giving us the chance at a free city tree removal!)

Here is a mature tree in front of a neighbor’s house. I love the form it takes at this size, so light and yet very strong parallel upward branches.

This spring (2011) was not a good year for plum blossoms. Almost everything bloomed later on schedule due to the bizarre ice freezes of February, then dropped what few flowers they had in the lack of rain. It’s almost as if we’ve skipped spring altogether.

I’m sure this year was one of the most glorious they’ve experienced–after the intense drought of 20 months we had loads of fall rain (good for getting new plants established and all the wildflower seeds germinating) and then so far a pretty rainy spring. Today it’s 70, and it’s late April. Last year it was in the mid-90s by now and all the sweet peas had croaked.

Not that things were without worry. Several hard freezes–which are unusual if totally absent here–killed back a lot of plants that are usually green through the winter. I thought I’d lost the New Zealand flax, but now new leaves have sprouted up. Same with the oleanders. All those on-the-cusp tropical plants didn’t fare well, and I’m sure were completely lost in gardens outside the city. While driving by one of the local garden centers this week, I noticed my favorite hedge of oleanders had been torn out and cleaned up.

I also worried about the sweet peas–by far my favorite spring plant. Half of the seedlings died in the first freeze and the other half looked as if they were about to follow in another surprise freeze in late February. I mean, we had snow! And usually the early-blooming sweet peas start around February. Better late than however, and those that remained went on to grow like weeds this past month.

Normally the later-blooming sweet peas don’t have a chance here–the best bets are buying either Painted Lady (an antique early-bloomer) or winter-blooming kinds. But for the first time I have an abundance of Cupani and Matucana (similar to the original wild sweet pea) growing right next to April in Paris–which I’ve tried unsuccessfully to grow for three years. It usually succumbs to heat and mildew before it gets a chance to bloom. (Sweet peas seem to develop lots of blind shoots above 90 degrees.)

Anyway, these three are by far the most fragrant of all the sweet peas and just a little vase of them makes a whole room sweet.

Like many of the existing bulbs that came with the house, I suspect they were planted several decades ago, before fences and apartment buildings and overgrown shrubs. And I had never seen them bloom. So I moved them around, threw some out (irises divide rather quickly and I was running out of room). A few of them bloomed in spring of 2008, and were a yellow color, so I assumed they were all this way. But I’m grateful I didn’t throw more out, or I would have missed this lovely huge white iris!

What a joy to be continually surprised by one’s garden, to have these “freebies” popping up. I thought I had seen the last of the surprise bulbs until a strange tazetta appeared last spring. Even after 6 years of living in our house, there are still flowers left to be discovered. Now if only the heirloom crinums would bloom.

From my experience, irises don’t bloom the first year after you plant them. I’ve had one or two rare exceptions. I have moved some in spring, and they didn’t even bloom the following spring. It seems to me they need at least a full year in the ground, probably two. Most of the time irises are purchased and planted in fall–from what I can gather, the best time to plant them here in Texas is around September. In spring it’s possible to buy potted iris plants in nurseries, and I often see Louisiana irises sold this way.

But the great thing about the bearded iris types is they are pretty indestructible. It seems like they can live for years off the nutrients in their little bulbs. I’ve thrown teeny broken bits of iris rhizome on top of compost piles and they went on to grow new leaves without even rooting. They’re very easy to divide and multiply. Their only fussy requirement is that they don’t usually like overly wet soil and it’s standard practice to keep the rhizomes visible on the soil surface; otherwise they may rot. So I have to be careful about mulching and composting over them.

At first I thought it was some kind of skullcap because I didn’t know anything about plants when I bought it. It kept popping up occasionally in early summer, in the same places where I’d sown Texas Red Sage (Salvia coccinea) seeds. Is this color a naturally-occurring variety of red sage? I don’t know, but it continues to reseed and looks beautiful mingled with its red sisters.

Both can get quite rangy by the end of the summer, are the same height (1 1/2 to 2 feet) and have similar leaves and both like growing in the same dappled shade conditions. Salvia coccinea is something of a tender perennial; in our milder winters it will survive with some water and perhaps die back a bit. My original pink sage plants (picture above) were almost four years old and remained green in winter before a frost in 2010 really bit them.

At the end of our horrible summer of 2009, I thought the pink salvia was a goner to the heat and drought. My two plants were also planted too far into the bed so got overwhelmed by taller plants. So I replanted them and cut them back severely in the fall. They seemed to like the move as well as the additional water they got from the drip system and this year they bloomed their hearts out all summer long, one of the few flowers to do so.

I came back from several travels this summer to witness a slowly eroding lawn and lost perennials. In case you aren’t from Texas we are sustaining a pretty nasty drought period. Last summer was bad enough and this summer Austin’s weather officially broke all records. (Most days 100-plus degrees, hottest average.) One weatherman said this was the hottest summer since sometime in the late 1800s. I’m not yet packing my bags for San Francisco; although I dream of gardening in a climate like that I know I couldn’t get half the garden space I have here.

I try to take it all in stride. We underwent a major landscaping and planting overhaul last fall, and many of my “permanent” garden plants are in their first year–so I am tempted to stress out and what is happening here, but for some reason I thought to myself, this is what I got myself into. Even the cactus are wilting.

I love the idea of filling in bare spaces with summer annuals but there are so few that don’t need to be attacked with water daily. I had few sunflowers that actually got to blooming before dying and some needy zinnias. Cosmos sulphurus seem to be the only flowers that don’t need water every single day–maybe every other day. (Yes, even those xeriscape plants still suffer in 40 days of 100 degree heat and no rain.)

Over the last four years I have slowly built a large drip irrigation system, set on timers, to help me. Drip irrigation is fairly easy to set up, but takes time and doesn’t always run correctly. Often a clog or bug will block up the whole system, and if this happens while I am away, whole sections of my garden will stay without water for weeks. Once while away a clog burst off one of the connectors, and the resulting water just spilled out into a puddle during every timed watering session.

Drip systems have other limits. A certain line of tubing can only run so far away from the house, with so many drippers on it, before the farthest end of the line loses pressure. So watering the far back of my garden has become hand watering only.

It’s also not the be-all-end-all solution to shrubs like roses. Drip irrigation does focus the water in one spot, not wasting any water, but a drip system isn’t the greatest at soaking the entire root ball unless you have mini sprinklers. Roses have large roots and small feeder roots and if these stay dry you will notice the rose responding in kind with browning leaves and canes. This summer I lost several good canes on roses that were being watered regularly with drippers. A rose appreciates a good long soak all over the place at least once a week in a summer (and more than that here).

I will try to write more about drip systems in hopes that my experience will help others. In the end I am at the mercy of gracious friends who understand my love for my garden, and come to check on things. My potted patio gardenia was struggling before I left, but a green-thumb friend seemed to bring it to life, looking better than it did in spring bloom.

Because my lifestyle includes travel, I have to live with something that can’t be watched over 24-7.

The oxblood lilies started to poke out in my driveway this week, the usual first blooms of fall, and now I’m hatching all sorts of fall plans. It’s my favorite time of year to garden, to be in the garden. I’m a fall baby, so I always think of fall as a fresh start.

Viola ‘Etain’, a perennial viola in some climates, died during our three-week stay in Europe. Partially because a friend accidentally turned off the drip system in this area, but I have a feeling it would have needed daily watering anyway. I loved how much these bloomed in spring and even through the early days of June, but they do need water. I think I will pass on these again (although they have a beautiful fragrance, if you can find them!).

My two Philippine Violet plants, planted last October, were looking great in early summer but have sadly passed on. These aren’t violets but look like bushy ruellias, and were recommended to me by the Natural Gardener as a good shade plant. One died by the time we got back from Europe, and the other kept wilting despite me watering it every day for a week. I love these plants and they are great for a shadier or understory garden, and I do see them around Austin. I suspected they died from some kind of root rot. Cotton root rot, or Texas root rot, as it is known in other states, can kill many plants, and is especially active in high pH soils (check) and temperatures above 90 (check). I would worry about trying these plants again if my garden is somehow susceptible to this rot.

Moving out of the Definite Goners category into the Curiously Misbehaving, we have here, as exhibit A:

I planted this culinary sage variety last fall and am hoping to have a big bed of them–they are so pretty and fuzzy like lamb’s ears and of course great for cooking. One of these four plants in this bed seems to be drowning and dying. The others are fine. I suspect this is a case of too much watering. I will have to dig under the roots and inspect. I had an idea in early summer to remove the other herbs from this bed (oregano, Mexican mint marigold and thyme), and have an entire bed of this salvia–it is that pretty. I tend to only plant in twos or threes, but from a distance sometimes my garden just looks so mish-mashy. I have a lot to learn from broad-strokes kind of gardeners. Anyhow, if it is too much water as I suspect (I had a lavender die in this bed two years ago), I may till it up and add some more of that super-duper expanded shale, a few bags of which I still have around.

I thought these were a no-brainer in a southern garden, but boy, the Cast Iron Plant sure looks natty. I think this is due to too little water, but still–not exactly cast iron tough.

Lamb’s Ears were another try–on some days as if they’ve had too little water. On others they appear to be drowning. I suspect this might just be a late-summer appearance. Lamb’s Ears often split open after flowering, creating a kind of rotted look in the middle. These, however, have not yet flowered this summer. I may just remove the rotted parts and see how they manage the rest of the summer.

I do love the Heart-leaf Skullcap, especially in spring. It reseeds like mad and really fills out an area with its fuzzy leaves and lovely salvia-like purple blooms. However, within one month the entire plant starts to die back, regardless of water use, and look very straggly. I have read that Heart-leaf skullcap often returns in fall but I’ve yet to see this happen in my garden after three years. I’m considering tearing it out this fall and planting Salvia guaranitica (“Black and Blue salvia”) in its place. This salvia looks just gorgeous in fall in much of Austin.

Other ho-hums and danger alerts:

I’d put this in the curiously misbehaving category but I know that Princess Flower (Tibouchina urvilleana) is in its first year and am learning it just needs more water than I thought. Of the three plants I bought, one has died from drought, and the two are holding on with brown tips at their leaves. I think these would appreciate morning sun only. I am on the edge of their hardiness zone, and they could possibly die over winter. But oh, how beautiful they are when in full growth (here and here)!

This Bicolor iris (Dietes bicolor) looks great in partial shade, and terrible in full sun. Unfortunately all those lovely spring blooms I see from these plants all over Austin are usually from the ones in sunshine. In the shade I might get lucky to have one or two. But by mid-summer they looks as if they’re dying in summer. So I guess one has to make a choice about which is the lesser of two terribles. Personally, I like this foliage in the shade–it looks like a tall very blade-y grass–and how it makes for a good understory or foundation planting.

After three years of watching them in my garden, daylilies seem to be fussier than I thought. While pretty in the spring, the foliage is rather spent-looking by now. Some even die back completely. Most of these are Stella d’Oro daylilies, and they just ain’t all that. I’m sure there are better daylilies out there, but this seems to be all the nurseries sell. Must’ve been a marketing thing. In this mass are also several heirloom daylilies that are as old as my house. They bloomed for the first time this year, on nearly 3 1/2 feet tall stalks, which tells me I may need to move them behind something. Note to self: daylilies will often skip a year before blooming after being replanted, just as I’ve discovered with irises. One must be patient with many bulbs.

Pleasant surprises and other good happenings in the garden:

For the first time, I’ve had success with zinnias. It could have been the soil, it could have been the watering, but they never looked this good. They do need water every two days.

My foundation planting of three Oak-leaf hydrangeas seems to be doing well. These are “Alice”, a tall oak-leaf cultivar. I imagine it takes a couple years to reach the height and fullness I am looking for and these were planted 10 months ago, and are growing at a medium-slow rate. However, four other plants have died in this same place including a beautiful Japanese aralia (Fatsia japonica) which seemed to die from rot. It is the same area in which the Philippine violets died from root rot, so I’m guessing I need to plant things known to be immune from now on, but thankfully the hydrangeas seem to be surviving it.

Hydrangeas, I was guessing, are a real risk here. I tried a pom-pom “Encore” hygrandea in here two summers ago and it lived until July at which point it declined beyond repair in the heat. An azalea suffered the same problem. (One has to be dedicated to keeping the soil acidic on these, which I am not.) I am hoping the oak-leaf hygrandea, which is a U.S. native, and seems to live successfully in southern climates, sticks around.

Acidic-need plants just stink in my garden. The last one I am trying is a Gardenia jasminoides in a pot. I was careful to give it a homemade, high-draining potting mix, and in the spring it bloomed beautifully (oh, that jasmine fragrance!), but started to look a bit ratty in early summer. While we were away a friend tended it for almost a month and it came back to me looking lush and green at the end of July! She has a love-touch with plants so I know that is half of the success, but also containers with rainwater and yes, gives them Miracle Gro. I am realizing, slowly, that I don’t fertilize or water pots enough. Containers have different needs, and I think that fertilizers drain more quickly in containers than in-ground plants. Containers don’t cultivate worms, don’t cultivate the same microbe conditions–they just need something extra. So I now use a combination of slow-release and liquid chemical fertilizer in my pots, with a splash of Superthrive in the watering. I’m sure this helps cultivate more acidic conditions, in addition to a constant supply of available nutrients that they weren’t getting when I was just using a very light fish-based organic fertilizer.

Do I need to say that I lost more grass this year? I wish I would have composted the lawn this spring, I think it would have helped, but I lost a huge 4-foot spot due to sun and heat. I don’t have a huge lawn, just a teensy weensy slice of it, but I do like having that green, no matter how unfashionable or thirsty it is.

Since I have started going to the Natural Gardener, they’ve changed their look a few times, expanding the grounds. I do miss the huge fruit orchard, some of which was replaced by a xeriscape display garden. I like xeriscape as an idea but also it has an underlying aesthetic which is a little too intentionally Buddhist-minimalistic for me. I am all for the wild and natural look. It’s fun to walk through their Butterfly garden, especially in late summer when the cannas and mistflowers and zinnias are covered with a rainbow of fluttering life and then sneak back into the pathway that leads toward the teepee–an area which is all wild cactus and native flowers–an area which is totally uncultivated and gives you a raw idea of what the land actually looks like there. There has been so much development of refined landscapes and homes in the Hill Country in the last decade that it’s easy to forget how wild and untamed (and desert-y at times) that land actually is.

The Natural Gardener calls itself “organic gardening headquarters” and offers classes and workshops, and the staff there is incredibly passionate and knowledgable about gardening. The don’t just sell stuff, they are gardening outside there every day. I see the Natural Gardener as one of the best examples of the Baby Boomer generation offering its knowledge to younger people. It is a very local, unique expression of the ways one can garden in Austin. The owner John Dromgoole is the sort of Texan that came of age in Austin in the 60s and 70s, a little hippie, a little soft around the edges, but definitely Texan in that I suspect he has “ranch” somewhere in his background. He reminds me of a good friend of mine–kind and concerned, and authentic in his own spirituality. My friend, who I’ll call O., raised his young family on a hippie commune and then in his 40s and 50s went on to start a house community, inviting a rotating cast of Gen-xers to live with them and experience some of what they did in their youth. I was one of those 20-somethings that lived with them for a time.

The big difference between my generation and the Boomers is that most of us didn’t grow up on farms. The Boomers are the post-war generation that remembers a more rural style of living; if they didn’t live it their parents did. And even if they sometimes reacted to what they perceived as society’s more institutional lifestyles, they still had an understanding of those lifestyles. My generation, on the other hand, couldn’t tell a Miracle-Gro bottle from a compost pile. Statistically, we were and are a much more urban-driven generation and grew up in the suburbs where maybe at best we watched our parents tend a lawn.

My father, for example, grew up on a sprawling farm. His father had horses, cows, ponies, pigs, four barns, dug-out fishing ponds that he stocked every year. And this was all in an suburb just miles outside of Detroit. By the time I was a teenager, that entire area was developed as a General Motors suburb, and the memory of it having been a farm long gone. My grandfather farmed because he had to and because it is just the thing one did. Having chickens and goats wasn’t just for the rural people, it was for anyone. He had a day job on the assembly line and in the rest of his life was a farmer. My father didn’t have to make that choice. And I am nowhere near having to make that choice. My in-laws both grew up with homesteading parents in the South. They no longer farm either, but live in a beautiful home near downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

And for some strange reason, our parents didn’t really pass on the gardening know-how to us; it is like a distant memory for them. I find that this is pretty typical in my generation, and we are having to re-discover gardening on our own. We don’t have the same reasons for doing it, but we do want to reclaim something that has been lost. This brings me back to the Boomers. They DO remember, but they also have a different philosophy–organic, sustainable, etc.–behind their gardening impulses than that of my parents. My parents didn’t need a philosophy to garden: it is just something one does.

The Boomer philosophy is evident everywhere if you really look. But what about us? Or the even younger people? I really think we have to re-define it on our own terms. What I appreciate about John Dromgoole’s approach is that he seems to be listening. He is parenting the gardening world, and he is parenting us, but with a gentle hand. In the Time Magazine video, he explains that most of the people in our generation are interested in vegetable gardening. With the current economic climate, and the threats of drought, we want to be able to create and provide our own food.

The gardening world is concerned with how to “reach” the younger generations, because, as they’ve rightly guessed, we just don’t have the same motivations or knowledge our parents did. Teaching about vegetable gardening is one way because locally-grown food is more important to us than ever.

I would suggest that the larger approach to teaching us should be to Keep It Creative. My generation values authenticity. We like stories. We learn from blogs (and not corporate ones, but usually a personal story), and make up things like “Guerilla Gardening”. We are pretty tribal in our approach to gardening, we learn from friends and sometimes learn things backwards. We have no idea where snapdragons come from. Tell us stories about their wild habitat in Israel, with pictures. We don’t know the Latin names. Tell us stories about botanists who hunted down wild lilies in China and how the names came from that. We are interested in heirlooms because there’s something about reclaiming the past that interests us. Tell us how to hybridize our own plants. Farmers did this all the time, why can’t we?

It was telling that the same Time article included a link to an “avant-garde gardening” photo essay, that those interested in the new generational spending impulses would also appreciate the interaction between conceptual art and gardens. Being creative doesn’t just mean design-branding but actual authentic artistic expression. We work in creative industries, are the most artistically, information-driven generation ever (and the ones that follow even more so). Fine artists and storytellers need to be integrated into the gardening world. Where are the Gertrude Jeckylls of my generation?

If, for example, you are selling seeds that were raised and collected in California, tell us why. Use a local artist to paint these wonderful plants, and tell us stories about these flowers, right on the package. We like boutiques, not malls. This message about creativity is important I think because so much of the gardening approach remains so bland and driven by the practical metaphors of previous generations. Why are tomato cages so boring? Or rainwater barrels (I mean, c’mon, black plastic ugly barrels)? I’m not talking about product design but about integrating creativity and fun into gardening–hire more artists for your company. They will bring it to life.

More importantly, I want to mention a caution. We are driven by different passions than the Boomers. We don’t have as much of a “got to get ourselves back to the garden” thing. We do want to be funky and fun and true to who we are. We value authentic, one-of-a-kind expression. We are learning, slowly. We need to be encouraged to do it on our own way, while learning old, lost wisdom along the way. We have enough pressures as it is–economic worries, general political anxieties–and to put us under some religious pressure to “garden for the future or else everything will be destroyed” will only heighten our anxiety and take the true joy out of learning. Gardening should not be a place of existential struggle; it is hard enough to tend the earth and requires patience. I have several friends who are wracked with guilt if they don’t recycle every last scrap of their unused waste. I find this pressure too much to bear when I am gardening. What comes out of joy and personal expression will last a lifetime, and we will pass that onto our children, who might become the wisest gardeners ever.

The sweet peas will be the first to go in the heat; most of them are already riddled with powdery mildew, especially the early-blooming types. Although I adore the fragrant old-fashioned sweet peas, they don’t start blooming until right now, and they have about three weeks before the heat starts to get them.

If you are a Texas gardener and you really want to have more than three weeks of sweet peas, the winter-blooming types are the way to go. Sadly, they just have so little fragrance, which to me is the whole point of growing sweet peas, although I can’t complain that I’ve had two months of gorgeous flowers to cut.

There is, however, one exception to these, the old-fashioned Painted Lady, probably the oldest variety in cultivation next to the original sweet pea itself. This gorgeous and dainty pink and white pea blooms first in my garden–the last two years it started in January. Unlike most of my sweet peas, I started this from a nursery-grown transplant so it has a slight head start on the others.

There is a conundrum with my Painted Lady. According to Graham Rice, the first early-blooming sweet pea was Blanche Ferry, which was a sport of Painted Lady. However, when I grew Blanche Ferry from seed last year, it didn’t bloom until April, along with the other old-fashioned Grandifloras. In other words, Painted Lady is supposed to be a spring-blooming sweet pea, and Blanche Ferry the earlier one. So this year I experimented again. I obtained seeds of Painted Lady from Owl’s Acre in England, and bought a transplant of Painted Lady from the nursery, to see if both would bloom early. Once again, the transplanted Painted Lady started blooming in January. The seed-grown version, however, stayed quite small until last month, took off and finally started blooming last week. Not only did it bloom two months later, it looks distinctly different–to a casual gardener, maybe not by much, but very different to me.

The flowers of my seed-grown Painted Lady are dark pink in their standards (upper petals) and a brushed pink on their wings (lower petals). The transplant-grown Painted Lady is a distinct pink and white (occasionally its lower petals have a brushed pale pink but they quickly fade to white). The seed-grown Painted Lady also has slightly larger flowers. I like horticultural mysteries and mix-ups are not unusual (see my entry on Byzantine gladiolus), so I revisited the Owl’s Acre site which says:

“The original Painted Lady sweet pea arose as a sport from ‘Cupani’ in about 1730. It had only one or two small flowers per stem, and survived in cultivation at least until 1910 when it was not considered to be worth growing. This form is clearly a more recent reselection, with larger, more numerous flowers.”

So my seed-grown flowers are definitely a more recent selection than my transplants. Roger Parsons, a horticulturalist responsible for maintaining the British National Collection of sweet peas, mentions a potential mix-up on his site: “Almost all Old-Fashioned types are also Summer flowering. The exception to this is ‘Blanche Ferry’, named in 1889, which was originally released as an early flowering form of ‘Painted Lady’. I suspect that the two have got a little mixed since there are stocks of ‘Blanche Ferry’ which flower in summer and stocks of ‘Painted Lady’ which flower earlier. ”

As with many heirloom flowers, especially ones of an 18th century variety, things change over time, re-selection might add slight new characteristics, and growing environments and cultures will eventually add their own stamp. In other words, the heirloom you are growing today might not be exactly as it was 200 years ago. Most of the very early sweet peas, for example, only had one or two flowers on each stem, but even the heirloom Cupani, which is supposed to be the original, has sometimes three or four. Some horticulturalists hunt for plants with more primitive characteristics, often from their native homeland, in order to breed back some of the originality. (Fragrance in particular is most potent in the primitive kinds.)

So I have two Painted Ladies. The early-blooming Painted Lady is probably older than the seed-grown one, as it has smaller flowers and less of them per stem. It is also most likely to be closer to Blanche Ferry than it is to Painted Lady. Perhaps I could complete my experiment by finding seeds of a more primitive Painted Lady rather than the Owl’s Acre variety. Renee’s Garden started selling Painted Lady this spring, claiming it to be early-blooming, so perhaps it is more like my nursery-grown plant.

Gardening has seemed to spark in me a new interest in science and little growing experiments. I really enjoy amateur botany and growing things side by side for comparison. I’m fascinated with these beautiful flowers, their history and how to grow them better in our climate. because the early-blooming types are far more successful in my garden. Given how early the transplant Painted Lady blooms, I want to make sure I’m growing that one and not the other (while pretty and fragrant, simply not worth it for the 6 months it doesn’t flower). I adore the Old-fashioned and fragrant sweet peas, but they bloom too late here. I wish there was more color variety in early-blooming types, more fragrance. My early-blooming Painted Lady is the one source of beautiful fragrance along my entire fence of sweet peas.

The other early-blooming sweet peas are Winter Elegance, Cuthbertson’s (Royals), Mammoths and the recent “Winter Sunshine” series by Owl’s Acre. All of these have lovely colors but rather dull fragrances (which seems to be a bit stronger in the darker colors). Additionally, none of the winter-blooming types have bi-colors (which Painted Lady and Cupani have) or other unusual color patterns like streaks or picotees which are all widely available in the Spencer/summer-blooming sweet peas. Perhaps the gene for early blooming peas prevents unusual color patterns.

Last year I grew a seed mixture called “Old Spice” and of this mix there was one pea in particular that flowered early. I wish I would have saved the seed. Although sweet peas have been classified into three flowering seasons, there aren’t really strict boundaries here. The gene which influences early-flowering can have varying effects in plants, as I’ve discovered from a little research into pea genes. So there are always some exceptions. If you are reading this and know of some early-flowering old-Fashioned sweet peas, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m not a geneticist but I’m always conducting little odd science experiments. And there must be some old-fashioned pleasure in breeding one’s own flowers. Perhaps I should start breeding my own early Texas sweet pea?