Garden IdeasNow

Local timing

Let your season
set the dates.

Translate timing instructions into dates using your local frost estimates. Soil warmth, weather and cultivar requirements still decide when to act.

Your growing season

These are illustrative dates. Use local historical guidance and forecasts. For the southern hemisphere, your season may cross into the next calendar year.

A crop or task

These example settings are planning assumptions, not universal tomato instructions. Use your seed packet and regional extension advice. Some maturity labels count from sowing rather than transplanting; enter a value appropriate to this tool's planting date.

A window, not a promise

Frost dates are estimates. Cold soil, unexpected heat, heavy rain and a slow-growing cultivar can move the useful date. Starting indoors is relevant only to crops that suit transplanting.

For direct-sown crops, enter 0 indoor weeks, interpret the outdoor date as a sowing date and use days from sowing. Maturity is the first expected harvest, not the date a bed becomes empty. Allow separately for the picking period before planning a replacement crop. Successive plantings occupy the same space at different times; they are not extra plants that fit simultaneously.

See University of Minnesota planting guidance for a regional example and Maryland Extension on succession. Check local advice for your climate.