Lovely collection of Sweetpeas you have collected there, Louise! I haven’t been able to bring any more home from the allotment yet but there are 1,000s of flowers from ‘Royal Family’ currently open or going over. I love the combinations of colours of this variety & would like to grow it again next year. This time on my balcony!

One of my disappointments this year was “Orange Dragon”. I deliberately grew it in more shade than I would normally – had read this was important to develop the colour – but until the last few days, it’s been persistently flowering a salmon pink. So I was belatedly surprised and happy to see a bloom today that was finally more orange…

My ‘Spanish Dancer’ has also been disappointing! I was so looking forward to seeing it in flower! It has been “flowering” since the 3rd of July. The flowers have been small & sparse & the plants vigour is not what I would have hoped for & its growing in a pot of its own whereas my other Sweetpeas, ‘Explorer Mixed’, ‘Royal Wedding’ & ‘Saltwater Taffy Swirls’ , have to share with other plants. It also gets the earliest sun in the morning which starts around 9am on the balcony & lasts till gone midday, in its position. As our balcony faces South-West it gets just about all the sun that’s available any time we see any – which has been pretty scarce the last 4 months! The sunlight comes into the balcony around 11am & only leaves when the sun is about to set.

‘Saltwater Taffy Swirls’ is probably doing the best of all my Sweetpeas. It is now over a metre tall – not much for plants that have been in the white troughs on the balcony floor since end of May! The ‘Royal Family’ Sweetpeas on the allotment, (with a whole lot less care than on the balcony), have surpassed 2 metres in about the same time!

Photo is of ‘Spanish Dancer’ taken in early July.

bq. How do you say “we shall see” in Spanish? Veremos