One of the first steps you take when you are figuring out your gardening schedule is find your USDA Zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

One way of figuring out when it's the best time to plant sweet peas is to use the USDA zone info for Sterling.

Planting Calendar for Sweet Peas

Frost tolerance for sweet peas:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

Sweet Peas do ok in moderate cold which means that you can get them planted just a bit earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant sweet peas in Sterling is March. However, you really should wait until April if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant sweet peas and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your sweet peas may not have a chance to really do well. Starting your sweet peas indoors is a great way to get them started a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Sterling. You can expect an average low temperature of -15°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Sterling is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Sterling last frost occurs after April 15 so always be ready to protect your sweet peas if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Sterling

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-15°F
Highest Expected Low	-10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in Sterling

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Sterling.