When to sow peas?
- Botanical name
- Lathyrus oleraceus
- Family
- Fabaceae
Peas are sown outdoors from March to June, 5 cm deep. They germinate in 6 to 15 days. They are harvested from June to October.
Peas are annual plants. The edible parts are the leaves, flowers, fruit and seeds.
Pea seed germinates in cold ground, and the young plants take a light frost. Sowing therefore comes before the danger of freezing has passed.
Peas can be sown straight into the bed or raised in pots and moved out. Pots help when the ground is still too cold and too wet, and the seed in them is safe from mice.
The pea is a legume and fixes its own nitrogen, so it counts as a light feeder. A return to that bed follows in the fourth year. The break holds for the whole family, so no bean goes on that bed in that time.
Peas through the year
- indoor sowing
- transplanting
- outdoor sowing
- harvest
In short
The last frost is not on the same day everywhere, so the recorded weeks are a guide and not a date.
Growing conditions
Companions in the bed
Companion planting is tradition and not an agronomic claim. What is recorded is which pairs sources recommend and which they advise against.
- “Cited” means the pair is named by one source or two.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- A white, floury coating spreads over the leaves, first on the lower and older ones. The leaf under it yellows and dries up. The fruit stays small, because the plant loses leaf surface.
- Prevention
- Plant resistant varieties, leave an airy spacing and sun, and clear the debris at the end of the season. Unlike most fungi it is not helped by wet foliage, since it spreads in heat and high air humidity, in a dry summer too.
- What to do
- Oil products meant for powdery mildew on the squash family work on contact. They do not cure a leaf that is already affected, but they stop the spread to healthy ones. On herbs cut the affected shoots back instead, since the new growth comes clean. On ornamental perennials what is left is spacing and moisture.
Check the registration and the label before use.
Keep track of your plants with Tendask
Log the task and set a reminder for the next one. Every plant keeps its own history, so there is nothing to guess at.
Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Fabaceae).
Sources about the plant: Alabama Cooperative Extension System, Bayerische Landesanstalt für Weinbau und Gartenbau, Colorado State University Extension, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, KGZS Kmetijsko gozdarska zbornica Slovenije, KGZS Zavod Ljubljana, KGZS Zavod Nova Gorica, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Royal Horticultural Society, Semenarna Ljubljana, Smernice za strokovno utemeljeno gnojenje (Mihelič et al., MKGP 2011), Utah State University Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 27 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: Clemson Cooperative Extension, UF/IFAS Extension, University of Maryland Extension, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.