Mind your p's and q's: Plant sweet peas early for best results

Some say the most intoxicating perfume in the world comes from sweet peas. The sweet scent is often described as a mixture of honey and oranges.

You can grow sweet peas in your Midwest garden, but you'll have to get started as soon as possible. Once the summer turns hot, sweet pea vines will start to balk; like their vegetable cousins, they grow best in cool weather and seem to be immune to light frosts.

By planting the seeds as soon as the soil thaws and dries out a bit in spring, you'll have the best chance to enjoy the exotic fragrance of these sunbonnet-shaped flowers. Sometimes, when the weather doesn't cooperate for early spring planting, I hurry my sweet peas along by planting the seeds indoors in small individual pots. To speed up their germination, I soak the seeds overnight before planting.

Here are a few other things that improve the chance of sweet pea success: Protect the vines from the hottest temperatures by planting them where they'll have some afternoon shade. If the soil isn't well-drained, plant the seeds in a raised bed or on a berm. Mix powdered legume inoculant with the seeds before planting. Mulch plants to conserve moisture. And water whenever the weather is dry.

Most sweet peas grow as 6-foot-tall vines and require a fence or trellis for support. There are also short mounding types, such as the pink-flowered Cupid, which are ideal for planting in containers.

Grown in gardens for centuries, sweet peas come in a wide assortment of varieties, in every color except yellow. Newer varieties tend toward large, ruffled blossoms while heirlooms often smell the sweetest. In varieties such as April in Paris and Renaissance, breeders have managed to combine both traits.

Late-blooming Spencer sweet peas -- popular for their long, strong stems -- do not fare very well in the Midwest. To enjoy sweet pea blossoms as long as possible in the summer, it's better to grow a heat-tolerant variety, such as Old Spice. Old Spice offers a colorful mix of heirlooms, all highly fragrant.

If you grow sweet peas, feel free to cut enough blossoms to fill every room of your house with their sweet perfume. The more you cut, the more the plants bloom. Allowing flowers to go to seed, on the other hand, will end the show.

If rushing to plant the seeds of annual sweet peas every spring doesn't appeal to you, there's an alternative: Grow the perennial version instead. Very dependable and easy to grow, these perennial vines bloom their hearts out from July to frost, in your choice of pink, red or white. But alas, they have no scent.