Seed Starting Schedule
Count back from your local last-frost date to when each crop should be started indoors and when it can go out.
Your last frost
This is the one number the whole schedule turns on, and it is local — it can shift by two weeks across a single county. Your state extension service publishes it for your zip code; so does the National Gardening Association’s frost-date lookup. Use theirs, not a default.
An “average last frost” is a coin flip, not a guarantee. Waiting a week or two costs a little season and saves a whole flat of seedlings.
The calendar
| Crop | Start seeds | Into the ground |
|---|---|---|
| Enter a frost date. | ||
Weeks-before-frost figures are the standard published ranges; this uses the middle of each. Direct-sown crops show the same date in both columns, marked “direct sow”.