Sowing peas little and often, from March to June

In the UK, sow peas outdoors from early March to late June. A row only crops well for about four weeks, so the trick is to sow little and often, every three or four weeks through spring, rather than one big row.

You can also sow hardy varieties outdoors from mid-October to late November, or start peas indoors from early February to late March and plant them out from early March to mid-April.

Spring and summer sowing

Early March sowings are the gamble. Peas germinate slowly in cold soil, and mice and rot take a share. Covering the row with a cloche or fleece for the first few weeks helps a lot. By April, peas come up quickly and reliably.

From May onwards, sow in a spot that gets some shade at midday and keep the soil damp. Peas like cool weather, and summer sowings can struggle with heat and powdery mildew. A quick early variety sown in June can still give pods in late summer.

The dates here are for a typical lowland garden in England or Wales, with a last frost around 20 April. In Scotland, the north of England and frost pockets, start later in March and finish sowing earlier in June. In the south-west, near the coast and in cities you can begin at the start of March.

Autumn sowing

From mid-October to late November you can sow a hardy, round-seeded variety such as Meteor or Douce Provence outdoors. The seedlings come up, sit through winter, and crop from around May, weeks before anything sown in spring.

Peas are hardy to about -5 °C, so autumn sowing is a risk in cold gardens. It works best on free-draining soil in milder areas. Cover the row with a cloche or fleece in hard frosts, and sow a spring row as well in case winter takes them.

Starting peas indoors

If mice are a problem or your soil is cold and heavy, sow from early February to late March in deep modules, guttering or root trainers, two or three seeds to a cell. Keep them somewhere cool and bright. Harden them off and plant them out from early March to mid-April, when they’re about 8 cm tall.

How to sow outdoors

1. Choose a sunny spot with soil that drains well. Peas fix their own nitrogen, so they don’t need much feeding.
2. Make a flat-bottomed drill or trench 4 cm deep.
3. Sow the peas 7 cm apart. A trench a spade’s width across, with peas zigzagged in two or three lines, gives a good thick row.
4. Leave 60 cm between rows, or about the height of the variety for tall types.
5. Cover, firm gently and water if the soil is dry.
6. Put in your supports straight away.

Supports

Most garden peas grow to around 120 cm, and they climb by tendrils, which need something thin to grip. Twiggy hazel or birch sticks are traditional and work well. Pea netting or chicken wire on posts is the alternative. Put supports in at sowing time, so the seedlings find them as soon as they come up. Dwarf varieties of 45 cm or so only need a few short sticks.

Neighbours and rotation

Carrots, radishes, turnips, spinach and cucumbers all grow happily near peas. Keep peas away from onions, garlic, shallots and leeks. Peas belong with the legumes in a crop rotation, and leaving their roots in the ground after harvest gives the next crop a small nitrogen boost.

Picking

Peas take 60 to 100 days from sowing, and the harvest runs from mid-May to mid-October across all sowings. Pick pods when they’re plump but still bright green, and pick every couple of days. Left to ripen, the peas turn starchy and the plant stops flowering. Mangetout is picked flat, before the peas swell. Sugar snaps are picked when the pods are fat but still crisp.

Common problems

Mice and birds. Mice dig up seed, especially early and late in the year, and pigeons strip young plants. Start peas in modules or net the row.

Pea moth. Small caterpillars inside the pods in summer. Very early and very late sowings usually flower outside the moth’s main season, so they escape it. For other sowings, cover the row with fine insect mesh while it flowers.

Powdery mildew. A white coating on the leaves in late summer, worst on dry soil. Water at the roots in dry spells and pull plants out once they stop cropping.

For a rough idea of how many to sow in a small space, see our square-foot gardening spacing chart, or open the pea page for every sowing window at a glance.