Peas are one of the first crops that you can plant out in your garden.  There are a great many saying on how peas should be planted before St. Patrick’s Day or before the Ides of March.  In many areas these dates fall early enough in the season that there still may be frosts, freezing temperatures and even snow.  While peas are able to take the cold and even flourish best in cool temperatures, how cold does it have to be before they are no longer able to tolerate the cold?

Peas are able to do just fine in temperatures as low as 28F.  If temperatures do now fall down below this mark, peas and pea seedlings will be just fine.

Between 28F and 20F peas can survive the cold, but will suffer some damage.

But this is assuming that the cold happens without an insulating blanket of snow.

If snow has fallen and has covered the peas, the peas can take temperatures as low as 10F or even 5F without suffering too much damage.

Peas grow best in temperatures of no higher that 70F during the day and no lower than 50F at night.  Peas will grow and produce outside of these temperatures, these are only the best conditions under which to grow them.

While folklore may say that you should have your peas planted by about the middle of March, it is always a wise idea to take into account your local climate and weather patterns before doing so.