Vegetable · Fabaceae
When to plant peas
One of the first crops to go in. Peas want cool weather and stop cropping in summer heat.
Sow direct
6 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 peas plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 6 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 as soon as soil is workable - six weeks before last frost is normal. In mild-winter climates an autumn sowing overwinters and crops six weeks earlier than any spring sowing can.
Frost tolerance
Established pea plants shrug off -6C. Seedlings tolerate frost easily; it is heat, not cold, that ends the crop.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -6°C (21.2°F)21.2°F (-6°C).