When to Plant

Each page below covers the sowing and transplant timing for one crop, framed against your USDA zone rather than a single generic date, since "plant in spring" means a very different calendar week in Zone 4 than it does in Zone 9.

Reading a When-to-Plant Page

Every page states whether the crop is typically started indoors and transplanted, direct-sown outdoors, or either, how many weeks before or after your zone's average last frost date that timing applies, and whether a fall or succession planting window is realistic for that crop. If you don't yet know your zone, the Zones hub and the Frost-Date Lookup tool will get you there first.

Cool-Season vs. Warm-Season Timing

Roughly half the crops covered here are frost-tolerant, cool-season crops - most brassicas, alliums, peas, and leafy greens - which can go in the ground several weeks before your last frost date and often again in late summer for a fall crop. The other half are tender, warm-season crops - tomatoes, peppers, cucurbits, corn, and most beans - that are damaged or killed by frost and need to wait until after your zone's last frost date has genuinely passed, not just until the calendar looks springlike.

For a faster path to a full-season plan across multiple crops at once, the Planting Calendar Generator tool builds a shareable, zone-specific calendar from a crop list in one step rather than requiring you to look up each crop individually.

Succession Planting

Many quick-maturing crops - lettuce, radishes, bush beans, spinach - can be sown in small batches every two to three weeks rather than all at once, spreading the harvest out instead of producing one large flush that ripens together. Each relevant when-to-plant page notes whether succession sowing is realistic for that specific crop, since slower-maturing crops like tomatoes and winter squash generally aren't good succession candidates in shorter-season zones.

Indoor Starting vs. Direct Sowing

Some crops transplant well and benefit from an indoor head start (tomatoes, peppers, brassicas), while others resent root disturbance and are best sown directly where they'll grow (carrots, beans, corn, most root crops). Each when-to-plant page states which approach applies, since using the wrong method for a given crop - transplanting a crop that hates root disturbance, or direct-sowing a crop that needs a long head start your season can't otherwise provide - is one of the more common timing mistakes new gardeners make.

Timing mistakes are among the most common and most avoidable problems in a first vegetable garden - a tender transplant set out two weeks too early can undo weeks of indoor seed-starting effort in a single cold night, which is exactly why this section exists as its own dedicated part of the site rather than a single line buried in each crop guide.