Swainsona Species, Desert Pea, Glory Pea, Lobster Claw

Grew this from seed bought while visiting our son in the Sydney area. Planted several in small coir pots in cactus soil with some smoke ...Read Morestuff. Managed to keep one alive and planted it in May in the front yard where it gets pretty much full sun most of the day. Soil is topsoil mixed with sand. It gets watered lightly about once a week and is thriving -- currently has 5 flower heads fully open and another 2 in bud. Flowers seem to last quite a while (my first ones are 3 weeks old and still look great). Beautiful, unusual, and pretty easy to grow. Now if it'll just make it through the Zone 9B winter..... I'll be collecting seeds from it, too -- want to get several more growing.

Can you eat the peas / pods off this plant?

Holy cow... Two days to germinate? I heard this was a tough one to SOW...

Soaked seeds in CAPE smoke primer for 24 hours....Read More Planted in a mix of WonderGrow Reground and River Sand - just barely damp.

48 hours later and I have 15+ sprouting! I will update more later! =)

UPDATE: The CAPE smoke primer makes a huge difference. I now have about 22 of these guys growing under light... Will be transplanted to a very sunny but rain-sheltered area outside after the final frost. WOOT!!

Tender Perennial for zones 9-10. Prefers a full sun, sheltered from strong winds site and very deeply dug, dry, sandy soil (wet kills it...Read More!). Before sowing, soak the seed for 24 hours, then sow ¼in deep and protect from excess wet by covering the area with a plastic sheet. Ground temp. should be around 65-70F when sowing. It did not survive being dug up and moved inside for the winter.... perhaps not enough sun. I had to protect it during the rainy season and and any time it started to get too damp it immediately got sickly looking, it was definately a desert plant.