Before planting it is a good idea to find your USDA Zone info to determine your garden schedule. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A common way of determining when it's possible to plant pea is to examine the USDA zone info for Washington.

Planting Calendar for Pea

Frost tolerance for pea:	Very tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 7 weeks before last frost.

Since pea are one of those plants that can tolerate quite a bit of cold weather you can plant them quite a bit earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant pea in Washington is February. However, you really should wait until March if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant pea and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your pea may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your pea indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Washington. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -15°F.

Remember that USDA zone info for Washington is an average and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Washington last frost occurs after April 15 be ready to protect your pea if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Washington

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 Washington

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