Vegetable · Fabaceae
When to plant mangetout
Picked flat, before the peas inside swell at all. Eaten whole, so nothing is wasted, and ready two weeks earlier than a shelling pea.
Sow direct
5 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
55-70
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make mangetout plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 5 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 55–70 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Sow again every 14 days for a continuous supply.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop.
Getting the timing right
Sow five weeks before the last frost, and again every fortnight until early summer. Autumn sowings in mild climates overwinter for a very early crop.
Frost tolerance
The plant takes -6C. Flowers and young pods are damaged near -2C, so a late frost costs you the first picking rather than the plant.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -6°C (21.2°F)21.2°F (-6°C).