Local planting dates
Planting calendar by ZIP code
Personalized sow, transplant, and harvest dates for 69 frost-dated crops, built from your USDA hardiness zone and your nearest weather station's frost dates.
A personalized year
Sow, transplant, and harvest bands for 69 frost-dated crops on one visual timeline, shifted to your dates.
Your real frost dates
Pulled from your nearest NOAA station's 1991-2020 freeze normals, not a generic zone average.
Sourced, not guessed
Every crop's window traces to a named university extension publication.
Worked example
When should you plant tomatoes, lettuce, and basil in ZIP 60614?
For a typical year, ZIP 60614 uses USDA zone 6b and a NOAA station mapped 5.0 miles away. Its average last spring frost is April 10 and its first fall frost is November 5. Each date below comes from moving a university extension planting window forward or back from those frost dates.
| Crop | Start indoors | Plant outdoors | Timing source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomato | February 27 to March 6 | Transplant outdoors: April 10 to April 24 | University of Minnesota Extension |
| Lettuce | February 27 to March 6 | Transplant outdoors: April 10; Direct sow outdoors: March 20 to March 27; Plant in fall: August 6 to September 10 | Utah State University Extension |
| Basil | February 13 to February 27 | Direct sow outdoors: April 10 | University of Minnesota Extension |
This example uses climate normals, not a forecast. Enter your own ZIP above for the same calculation using your nearest mapped station.
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After choosing the dates
Fit the crop plan into the bed
Use UF/IFAS Extension planting densities to check how many crops fit without crowding.
Open the spacing calculatorCommon questions
How are these planting dates calculated?
We take your ZIP code's USDA 2023 hardiness zone and the 1991-2020 freeze-date normals from your nearest NOAA weather station, then shift each crop by its planting window from university extension publications. Nothing is hand-typed per crop.
What does the frost risk setting do?
It picks how conservative the frost date is. Cautious uses the date by which a late frost is unlikely (only a 10 percent chance one comes later), so you wait longer and risk fewer losses. Optimistic plants earlier and accepts more risk. Typical year is the median.
My area never frosts. What happens?
If your nearest station shows no reliable freeze, frost-anchored timing does not apply and we say so. Plant by soil temperature and season instead; see each plant guide.
Data sources: USDA 2023 hardiness-zone ZIP listings and NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 freeze normals. Review the station mapping and download the sourceable table on the frost-date dataset page.