Not familiar with your summers. Is it hot/humid there? Sweet peas don't like that. I know you freeze in Winter.

In Northern CA, we sow seed in ~ November. Plants flower in ~ May thru July, then they turn tan, set seed & die. I know they use all that cool CA winter time (4-5 months) to make roots and store up energy for flowering. Then in April, they really start to grow. Checking my collection of gardening pictures, I see plants in mid-March that are less than 6 inches tall. By mid-April, they are 3 feet tall. Now, they are 7 feet.

Maybe you could sow earlier for better success? Sweet peas can be sown when temps are quite cold, but still near or above freezing.

You had a flower after 10 weeks...that sounds encouraging anyway. My best guess is the plant senses the end is near and is trying to set seed before Summer gets real hot.

Thanks deep_roots. That does make sense. It is quite hot and humid today.......30 celsius....about 90F? And we've had quite a bit of that lately. I've done very little direct sowing, so I will definitely start SP much earlier next year and hope for better results.

We are having a heat wave with high humidity and so far the sweet peas are ok, some are over 1 foot tall now. This is my first try with them. I water them every night because they are in a hot spot, don't care if they don't get too tall because I'm just experimenting with them and didn't have a sunny spot with anything really tall to climb on, don't want strings hanging down my front porch.

Don't know if they will bloom or not. I don't know how long this heat wave is going to last, and anything could happen with them. They did germinate well, got them in the ground in late May/early June, first scraggly ones died, later ones ok so far.

I have chicken wire covering a little trellis on one side of the porch steps and an old wine rack with bamboo poles stuck down into it on the other side. I am noticing that the little tendrils are fussy about what they want to grab onto, but then some finally do. They don't seem to like the polished metal wine rack much, but the chicken wire and bamboo poles a few are grabbing onto.

My attempts at sweet peas have always been met with so-so success. I will get a few flowers out of them but they don't get overly tall or abundant. I suppose I am starting them too late too.