How To Grow

Vegetable planting calendar

Your last spring frost date sets the whole calendar. Enter it once and every crop lines up around it.

Reviewed October 2026

Your seed calendar

Bars show when to start seeds indoors and when to plant outside, timed from your last spring frost.

Enter your ZIP code to look up your average last frost date and hardiness zone, or type the date in yourself.

Frost dates: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, 1991–2020. Hardiness zones: USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, 2023, ZIP code data from PRISM Group, Oregon State University, prism.oregonstate.edu, accessed Oct. 20, 2026.

Crops timed by soil temperature

Some crops are sown straight into the garden when the soil is warm enough, rather than on a fixed date. An inexpensive soil thermometer tells you when.

    How the dates are worked out

    Your frost date. The ZIP lookup uses NOAA's U.S. Climate Normals for 1991–2020. For each ZIP code, it uses the nearest weather station that reports a last spring freeze date: the date after which the chance of a 32°F freeze drops below 50 percent. Most ZIP codes are within 10 miles of their station. If the nearest station sits far higher or lower than the others around it, such as a mountaintop, the lookup uses the next nearest station that matches the local elevation. Where freezes are too rare to give a date, as in South Florida, coastal California and Hawaii, the lookup says so.

    Your hardiness zone. The lookup also shows your zone from the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map released in 2023, using the ZIP code table published by the PRISM Group at Oregon State University, which produced the map with USDA. Zones guide which perennials survive your winters; the calendar itself runs on your frost date.

    Crop timing. Each crop's timing comes from UNH Cooperative Extension's planting guide, which times every crop from the average last spring frost. Indoor start dates count back from the planting-out date by how long seedlings take to reach transplant size.

    An average last frost date is the date after which a frost becomes less likely than not. A frost can still come later, so watch the forecast and be ready to cover tender plants. If you don't know your date, see how to find your frost date.

    Gardening in Florida? Frost rarely sets the calendar there. Use our Florida planting guide instead.

    Sources