Fall Direct Seeding Guide

Found this one the Aggie Horticulture site. It's just Texas, but might be something to look for on other sites for your stae. The whole "weeks before first frost" thing doesn't really apply here, so I was glad to find this to give me some idea.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/fallgarden/falldirect.html

Right now I'm feeling like the cold climates did in January when I was starting out...anxious to get going, planning, ordering seeds, waiting for the change in weather so I can work in the garden again. I think I could have kept going longer if we hadn't gone on vacation in May. But those 2.5 weeks away resulted in an overgrown mess full of pests. I had someone watering and I expected she would harvest the tomatoes, but she just took a couple and left the others to rot on the vine, which attracted a TON of pests.

Well, this guide says I can plant tomatoes from seed on Aug 1, so I'm excited to try that. I had wonderful tomatoes in the Spring when they were expensive in the stores. Now they are cheap in the stores amd maybe I can have my own again in the fall when the prices go back up! When I lived in west Texas I kept my tomatoes going until a killing freeze and my best harvest was in the month prior to that, so I'm hopeful for a good fall crop...maybe even into winter.

For now, staying indoors with the A/C going!

Wow, that's an awesome resource. I wish I could find one like that for NC. Here's another link that I came across for people about frost dates. You put in your zipcode and it pulls what it can with information it had (I live in Charlotte and the next closest to me was Gastonia [which is just down the road from me] ). It's given me at least an idea of when I should look into starting fall seedlings.

Frost/Freeze Dates (zipcode needed)

Thanks, Elliephant. That's just what I've been needing. I'm in Zone 6 in southern Missouri which corresponds to your Texas Region I, so is it correct to assume the dates would be the same for me?

ander217 wrote:Thanks, Elliephant. That's just what I've been needing. I'm in Zone 6 in southern Missouri which corresponds to your Texas Region I, so is it correct to assume the dates would be the same for me?

I'm not really sure; the panhandle (Texas region 1) is the one area of the state I've not lived in! Is it in Zone 6?

Comparing these dates to another one I've found for this area specifically I'd say these are "plant by" dates, in other words latest rather than earliest dates. Does that make sense?

You can probably find the info from your local extension service. I googled for "fall planting dates for SE Tenn" & it had a chart with dates for first average frost for different communities, plus a chart that listed last planting dates for several veggies.