There is a mind-boggling list of possible culprits at this time of the year. My best guess would be fall armyworms or cucumber beetles since both commonly damage pea plants in the fall. I'd also check the undersides of the leaves to see if anything small (spider mites, aphids, thrips,etc.) is visible on the leaves. It is not unusual to have multiple types of pests on a plant at one time. If it is caterpillars of any kind, you ought to be seeing their frass (poop) on some of the leaves or on the ground beneath the plants. Cucumber beetles might be harder to spot as they can fly ni, do damage and fly out.

If you've had quite a bit of rain, it even could be one of the many fungal, bacterial or viral diseases that affect pea plants. Some of them can cause tissue necrosis that causes areas of the leaves to develop splotches that then die and leave the leaves riddled with necrotic patches.

The skeletonized sections of leaves, though, seem more indication of armyworms or some other caterpillar or maybe cuke beetles, which is why I mentioned them first. It could be almost anything, though, since so many insects are active right now and many of them love legume plants.

Running out to check on my peas....

My peas aren't looking right either! I wondered if it's because I planted them in a bed that had cucumbers and those cucumbers had aphids. I don't understand if a garden bed is "bad" for awhile after a plant has been ruined by aphids, or if I can plant new things right away.

AND...I wondered if they look bad because it's been so hot (not today or yesterday).

Hazel, Usually when pea plants are unhappy because of hot weather they kind of turn yellow, often near the bottom, and just look a little less happy. If they are both too hot and too humid, they generally develop powdery mildew.

With any garden bed, there's always a risk that existing pests will find the new planting, but it doesn't always happen. Aphids are sort of greedy little pests and will move to almost anything that is fresh, tender and yummy. Usually the lady bugs come along a couple of weeks later and clean up the aphids. I don't leave any bed fallow and always come in with something new (even if it is flowers or a cover crop) as soon as I clear out a bed. The pests are in the garden anyway, whether in the exact bed I'm planting or one that is 10 or 20 or 30' away.

In a healthy garden ecosystem, the beneficial insects usually will control the pest insects to some degree, and that is even more true of fall plantings because by then the beneficial insects have built up a nice, large population.

I normally have a lot fewer pest problems in fall most years, but nothing is normal about this year. After breezing through this summer with almost no grasshopper issues, we've had huge numbers of them migrate in during the last 2-3 weeks. Usually, by mid-August their numbers are falling, but this year their numbers started going up in mid-August. Likely that is when the dryness of our local rangeland peaked, and the hoppers deserted those fields and headed for the greenest areas left, which would be only the areas that were being irrigated.

Stink bugs have been a perpetual problem, as always, and one even came back to the fire station with me last week when I returned from a fire scene. I was not amused to find a stink bug hanging out in a bucket of cold drinks and ice and made sure he didn't hitch a ride home to my garden.

If the heat has been bothering your peas, but the plants still are looking fairly happy, they should perk up now that we are having cool nights. I've always thought that hot nights were harder on the pea plants than the hot days are---not that they like the hot days either. Heat is the enemy of all English peas and sugar snap peas, which is why growing them here is highly iffy. Some years they hate the weather and do poorly and other years they love the weather and perform well. Here in OK, we never know what kind of weather we'll get so peas are always a risk, but at least half the time they perform well.

Dawn