Every planting date traces back to two numbers: your last spring frost and your first fall frost. These guides explain what those dates really mean, why two gardens in one zone can differ by weeks, and how to plan each season around them.
Get a month-by-month calendar for your city, built on NOAA frost normals, with exact dates for your address.
Find your planting calendar→October 13, 2026 · 8 min read
After the frost-night harvest you're looking at pounds of green tomatoes and one question: how many will actually turn red? Some will ripen indoors into tomatoes worth eating, some never will, and you can tell them apart in ten minutes.
October 6, 2026 · 8 min read
Every fall, neighborhoods rake up one of the best soil amendments in existence and pay to have it hauled away. Leaf mold — leaves rotted down by fungi into dark, crumbly material — costs nothing and requires no turning, no recipe, and no skill.
September 29, 2026 · 8 min read
The first frost rarely ambushes anyone — the forecast announces it days ahead. This is the week-before playbook, crop group by crop group: what to harvest, what to cover, and what to leave alone when the low 30s show up.
September 22, 2026 · 8 min read
Don't jam the whole herb bed onto one sad windowsill. Some herbs thrive in a winter kitchen, some come in best as cuttings, some are hardier left outside, and some should be allowed to end with the season. Sorting them into those four groups gives you a much better winter windowsill.
September 15, 2026 · 8 min read
Saving tomato seed is the easiest serious seed-saving there is, and the fermentation method takes five minutes of work and three days of waiting. The catch is knowing which plants are worth saving from in the first place.
September 8, 2026 · 8 min read
Late summer hands you empty soil at exactly the moment most gardeners stop sowing. A second sowing of lettuce, spinach, radishes, or turnips costs a packet of seed, and the math is simple: days to maturity, counted back from first frost.
September 1, 2026 · 8 min read
With garlic, the planting date does most of the work. The window is generous once you know how to find it: four to six weeks before your first fall frost, counted from your own date, not the calendar.
August 24, 2026 · 8 min read
Mustard greens deliver bold, peppery flavor in four to six weeks. Grow them cool and succession-sow — heat makes the leaves hotter and pushes them to bolt.
August 22, 2026 · 8 min read
Bok choy goes from seed to stir-fry in just over a month — one of the fastest, easiest brassicas. Grow it cool, because it bolts at the first taste of heat.
August 18, 2026 · 8 min read
Turnips give you two vegetables in one fast package — crisp sweet roots and tender greens — ready in as little as five to seven weeks. The fall crop is best.
August 11, 2026 · 6 min read
A productive garden eventually hands you more than you can eat fresh. Preserving the surplus is how a summer garden feeds you in January — and freezing is the easiest, most forgiving place to start.
August 9, 2026 · 5 min read
A cold frame or low hoop house is a cheap way to cheat the calendar — start earlier in spring, harvest later in fall, and in many regions keep hardy greens alive right through winter.
August 8, 2026 · 5 min read
The first warm weekend brings the urge to plant everything at once — usually a mistake. A good spring is a sequence of small preparations that set the whole season up. Work through these in order.
July 20, 2026 · 8 min read
Parsnips reward patience — a long, slow season and a few hard frosts turn this pale root sweet and nutty. The two keys are fresh seed and deep, stone-free soil.
July 18, 2026 · 8 min read
Collards are the toughest, most forgiving brassica — they take summer heat that bolts kale and hard frost that sweetens them, cropping for months.
June 8, 2026 · 6 min read
The harvest doesn't have to end when the garden does. Winter squash, potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic are keepers — store them right and eat through the cold season the way gardeners always have.
June 7, 2026 · 6 min read
What you do in the garden in October decides how easy next April will be. A thoughtful fall cleanup breaks pest cycles, feeds the soil over winter, and gets you weeks ahead in spring.
June 6, 2026 · 6 min read
Frost dates aren't hard walls. A little protection at each end of the season buys you weeks — especially harvesting well past the first fall frosts.
June 5, 2026 · 7 min read
One week it's a tidy rosette; the next it's a flower stalk and the leaves turn bitter. Bolting is a survival reflex triggered by long days and heat — here's how to read the signal and buy yourself weeks.
June 4, 2026 · 8 min read
Midsummer feels like the end of planting season — it's actually the start of the second one. What to sow in July and August, the count-back math from your first frost date, and the heat-germination tricks that make it work.
June 3, 2026 · 7 min read
Spring planting counts forward from the last frost; fall planting counts backward from the first. Here's the count-back math, the fall factor nobody tells you about, and which crops actually get better after frost.
June 2, 2026 · 8 min read
Denver and Flagstaff share USDA zone 6a — and their last frost dates are six weeks apart. We ran the numbers on every US ZIP code: within a typical zone, frost dates spread across a full month. Here's the data.
May 28, 2026 · 6 min read
When a bed finishes for the year, don't leave it bare. A cover crop protects and rebuilds the soil over winter, then feeds next year's vegetables.
May 22, 2026 · 7 min read
The last skill of the season — and the one that most affects how your food tastes — is knowing exactly when to pick it. Here are the ripeness signs crop by crop.
May 16, 2026 · 8 min read
Thirty radishes the same Saturday, then bare dirt. Succession planting trades that feast-or-famine cycle for a steady trickle — by staggering sowings and replanting beds the moment they empty.
May 15, 2026 · 6 min read
Seedlings raised indoors need a week of gradual exposure before they can handle real sun, wind, and cold. Here's the hardening-off routine that prevents transplant shock.
May 7, 2026 · 8 min read
Garlic rewards patience: plant cloves in fall, walk away for winter, and harvest fat heads the following summer. Timing makes the crop.
May 1, 2026 · 7 min read
A useful garden task list should follow your frost dates, crop stages, and actual plan — not a generic national calendar. Here's the seasonal rhythm to use and what to automate.
April 17, 2026 · 6 min read
Hardiness zones are the most misunderstood number in gardening. Here's what they actually measure, and why frost dates run your vegetable garden instead.
April 16, 2026 · 7 min read
Your USDA zone says how cold winter gets — not when it's safe to plant. Here's what a last frost date actually is, why it's a probability rather than a promise, and how to plan around the risk.
Want these worked out for your own garden? Enter your ZIP for frost dates from your nearest weather station and a month-by-month planting calendar: