GardenPea variety
Sugar Snap Pea
✓ In your garden
Sugar Snap is a snap pea (tall vine), ready in about 68 days. Eat the whole crunchy pod, raw or barely cooked. Peas are a cool-season crop — sow the seed straight in the ground as early as it can be worked; they hate heat, so get them in early. Give the vines a trellis to climb.
“Eaten pod and all — crisp and sweet.”
Growing basics — shared by every pea
Sugar Snap grows like any other pea. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Pea page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 1–3 in
- Row spacing
- 18–24 in
- Planting depth
- 0.5–1.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–7.5
- Water
- Moderate
What is Sugar Snap good for?
- Fresh & rawSnap and snow pods are eaten whole. Great
- Stir-friesQuick, hot, and barely cooked. Great
- FreezingBlanch first. Great
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
What Sugar Snap is known for
Fedco Seeds describes this as:
- the pod is edible too
That is the company selling the seed, describing its own product. True, and worth weighing as such.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Sugar Snap in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around mid May, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Plant seeds outside
- early Mar – mid Mar
- Growing
- mid Mar – mid May
- Picking
- mid May – late May
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near Sugar Snap — and what to keep away
-
CarrotsTraditional
The classic cool-season pair.
-
Onions & garlicTraditional
Same flag as beans — every chart agrees.
The badge is the honesty. Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every pea.
Pairings compiled from West Virginia University Extension.
Growing Sugar Snap — the things that trip people up
- Sow peas as early as the soil can be worked — they germinate in cool ground and quit when summer heat arrives. A fall crop works too where autumns are mild.
- Put up a trellis or netting at planting — vining peas climb 5–6 feet and crop over a longer window. Pick often to keep the pods coming.
Sugar Snap pea at a glance
| Type | Snap |
|---|---|
| Grows as | Bush (determinate) |
| Days to ripe | 68 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Green |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about Sugar Snap
How long does Sugar Snap take to grow?
About 68 days from sowing — sow as early as the ground can be worked, since peas hate heat.
Do I eat the pod of Sugar Snap?
Yes — snap peas are eaten pod and all, picked young and crisp.
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