They do say to add a week or two to the DTM numbers when planting in the Fall. If you think about it, the days just get shorter and shorter, regardless of temperatures. I put some snow peas in last week, only to have them nibbled down by a vole. I have them covered now. Earlier in the year, when it started to heat up, I read that putting a shade cloth over my lettuce should effectively reduce the temperature by 10 degrees. I have thought this might be what I do if the peas regrow and if the temps shoot up again. It has been really pleasant here for the past few days, but I am told it will probably get hot again in August. I have the shade cloth ready.

About three weeks ago. You might try a dwarf like Sugar Ann that is a good 10-15 days earlier to bear. Still, get them planted ASAP. Or just go ahead and try the regular Sugar Snaps. You could probably just cover them if you have really cold nights in October and try to get them through. And, with this crazy weather and the long term forecast showing a big bubble of much above normal temps through the winter in the upper Midwest, this is probably a great year to experiment with late crops anyway. So even though it's late, the odds are better than average that you might get something.

I've applied a "shotgun blast" approach to sugar snap peas the last couple of years. I plant small sections at different times through out the Winter. Some are from nursery starts and some are from seeds. The nursery starts seem to produce earlier/faster, assumed to be due to stress, and the directly sown peas grow larger and produce later in the season. This approach works for me because I trickle in the harvest rather than bring in basket fulls of pods through out the season. It should be noted that if you ever find yourself overloaded with sugar snaps, they make the best pea soup EVER. If they are green and growing, just hang in there, you'll start harvesting pods soon enough.

I planted both Sugar Snap and Sugar Ann this year and was pleased with both here in central NH. I thought both stood up well considering the hot weather we had but I planted early after warming the soil with black plastic. I think my first planting date was April 9. I will plant less Sugar Snaps next year and try for a later planting. I grew two pea pod varieties that I didn't like at all. One was an Amish variety that a friend raved about and another was a yellow pod. Perhaps they would have done better if I hadn't planted them so late. What worked great was using concrete reinforcing mesh as pea fences. They are held in place by metal posts. The sugar snaps probably got 7 ' tall so they needed a strong fence. I should have also tied them up sooner. They don't seem to cling to the fence at all. In the vicinity of the Sugar Anns I found a couple of struggling plants really late in the season. I think they seeded from dropped pods. I wished I had grown a fall crop of these. NEXT year!