Sweet peas in my opinion don't do well started indoors. Here's your best chance to have sweet Peas by the end of may--although it's pushing it in your zone.

First pray for a warm spring.

Then save your milk jugs. Cut the bottom out of them and remove the lids. On St. Patrick's day line them up where you want to plant your Sweet Peas. Press the bottom into the ground. This will warm the soil.

The same day wet a coffee filter--you want it fairly wet but only as wet as the filter will absorb. Put your seeds in the filter and fold both sides down together over the seeds--not tight--just to make a pocket. Slip the filter with the seeds into a zip lock bag and seal it up leaving a little bit of air in the bag. You are aiming just for a bit of room for the seeds. Stick the bag in a place free from drafts. Check it every once in a while, but it will take a couple of weeks for them to sprout.

When they are sprouted, take them outside, remove the bottles, wet the area good and plant them in the ground--3 seeds to a bottle. Then replace the bottles. If the weather gets hot remove the bottles in the daytime. Sweet Peas like to grow cool and it can be 10 or even 15 degrees warmer in the bottles if the sun is shining on them. Remove the bottles completely once the leaves hit the sides of the bottles or you will burn the leaves.

I hope this will get you off to a good start and you'll have flowers for your wedding.

As for your other question--My sweet Peas --in zone 3--bloom most of the summer. It takes lots of 80 degree weather for them to shut down and we seldom get that kind of weather for a prolonged time.

i disagree with this:

Here's your best chance to have sweet Peas by the end of may-

===>>>> your best bet is to order them.. and pay for them.. and forget about growing your own ...

once ordered ... then give it a go.. and if you succeed.. you have twice what you need..

and if you fail miserably.. you are still all set.. with the fail safe ...

i planned our wedding [yeah.. believe it or not] .. and having about 150 rose plants at the time..

I ORDERED ALL MY FLOWERS.. and told the guy ... i will show up with extra.. god willing..

when i showwed up the day prior with 5 five gal buckets of roses.. he almost pooped himself .. but was so excited i thought he would.. lol ... it was a spectacular show ..

anyway.. i digress.. rather significantly .. lol ..

OF ALL THE THINGS YOU WILL NEED TO BE PERFECT FOR YOUR BIG DAY ... trying to beat mother nature and growing your own flowers is NEAR INSANE ....

now go focus on the important things..

it just isnt worth the stress.. should you fail

ken

Speaking as a person who does grow flowers for things like weddings, I can really agree with what Ken says. It's the last thing you need to worry about. I've found them to be a little touchy to grow started indoors, as well.

I was growing the flowers for my son's wedding three years ago and they were beautiful until two weeks before the day. Then, since it was in summer and the g'houses were so hot, spider mites descended on them and just gnarled up the flowers as they opened. I treated them, at the expense of the flowers, and ended up asking a colleague to bump some cuts in on his order (holiday weekend, no less). He came through for me and I wrapped and picked each bloom and poked them into the pots of foliage I salvaged. Not a job for an amateur. Talk about stress.

I was thinking you wanted them for decoration for the house not boquets and arrangements for the wedding it's self.

If I'm wrong then I agree with Ken. You don't want to be fooling around with mother nature and have no flowers. You can try but have a backup plan.

If money is an issue then do what my son and his wife did and order your flowers from the florist department at a grocery. They were every bit as nice as those from a florist but at 1/3 of the cost.

I had sweet peas for my wedding, too. I ordered them from the florist! You simply should not rely on being able to produce your own flowers for the big day.

1. I agree that to save stress and be sure of flowers I'd order from a florist if I could afford it.

2.I disagree that sweet peas can't be started indoors. I know zone 4 is different from my climate but here sweetpeas are routinely sown in November under glass (unheated in our climate). They are pinched regularly to get them multistemmed and planted out in April. Mine started flowering in the last week in May.

I didn't say they can't be started under glass, just that in our zone it can be pretty dodgy. We are inland and that means temperature extremes from winter to summer. It can be -31C when you start them and 33C or higher by May. In some areas of our country, it would be very like England and they'd do well started under glass with no supplemental heat. But in Michigan, they'd be frozen like iced squabs come January.

Lol, 'iced squabs'.....