This tool helps you plan your garden. Enter your location and it tells you exactly when to plant each vegetable type.
allthingsplants.com/apps/veggie_planner/Posted Jan 6, 2013, 9:34 PM UTC
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allthingsplants.com
I start my seeds on Valentine's day. It's easy to remember because I'm not doing anything.
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This is genius - I looked for something like this when I first began gardening a few years ago. But as bdubble says, the dates it's giving me are WAY earlier than I was used to. I was under the impression I couldn't plant tomatoes outside until temps stay over 50, around Mother's Day, but this site suggests March.
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I always plant my tomatoes right on my last frost date, which for me is mid March. That means that starting around that time I start looking at the weather forecast and as soon as there's no forecasted frost, I'm planting tomatoes. While they are getting established, they don't mind getting down to the upper 30s at all. Waiting until the low temps are over 50 is waiting too long, in my opinion.
Tweaking the dates and ranges, though, is built in to the system and anyone can change it for their location.
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I read up a little on this and find wide agreement that temps under 50 can permanently harm - not just slow growth - in tomatoes. So I don't want to take the chance. I only have room for three plants.
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Love the features, I'd be interested in anyone else's take on the dates. Seems to be telling me to plant way earlier than other guides for my area.
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New guide lines. Here in Idaho the season is a week earlier and the grape season is almost three weeks longer than in the past.
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It suggest planting earlier than I should as well. That said, this program is a lot better than any other I've used. Nobody every gets central Texas correct.
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How can I help you get this working for Australia?
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The system accepts data input. If you know your frost dates you can enter them and then anyone in that location will be able to use the tool.
Just enter the location and when it tells you that it doesn't exist in the database, it'll present a link to you where you can add it in. Already many redditors have entered data for their non-US locations and it's working great.
Edited to add: Also, if you have frost dates for numerous locations across the country, you can send that to me somehow in a batch and I can import them all. That's how we did most of Canada.
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I like it. Just moved from central FL to DC. This helps but the dates seem really early although it just not getting super cold anymore, here. I'd like to see the veggies that work well in containers identified. Maybe just an asterisk next to them. I'm growing in containers.
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Pretty good. This gets closer than any other program I've used like this. Most just ignore us (central texas). I do think the dates are pretty early on some of them when you compare to the local planting calendars (http://www.chotelaboratories.com/garden_diary/?page_id=216.) Thing is... I've got cabbage, broc, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce, etc growing in my garden right now :) We don't really have a period of time here where it's actually freezing for weeks on end. During the wintertime there's just a chance that it'll dip down to freezing for maybe a week or so before it warms back up a little. Lots of the cruciferous veggies can take that easy.
ps thanks and congrats on a good job.
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It did not work well for me. I live in Los Angeles and it said I live in a tropical zone and it couldn't calculate my planting. Besides not calculating calling the Los Angeles area a tropical zone when it is a desert is pretty inaccurate.
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Thanks for this feedback. You're right, Los Angeles isn't in the tropics, and I have updated it to remove that language.
Calculating planting dates for frost free areas is a real challenge and it's something that I've spent some time thinking about and several of my users have been giving me some thoughts on the matter. It's something that I intend to get added.
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Didn't realize that this was a resource you created. Good on ya!
Don't know if this helps but after my summer plantings I can do fall vegetables or what would be early spring veggies most other places. I am now picking some of my leaf lettuce and bok choi that I planted in October.
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I'm doing the same exact thing here in Southeast Texas.
Making an app for all the different climates has been way more challenging (and interesting) than I ever thought it would be.
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Have you considered making iOS, Android or Windows apps?
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transplant dates are almost a month too early for me in Erie.
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The app says that you should transplant around April 25 (with the caveat that you should check your forecast to make sure there's no upcoming frost in the coming week.)
In response to your post, I've done some research on your area and from what I can tell, that seems to be right on the money. An April 29th frost in your area is considered extremely rare and unlikely to occur.
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i guess it highlights the inherent flaw in the data they're pulling from. no one in their right mind plants before mid may around here unless you have money to burn.
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I'll take your word for it. And if you submit a change to the dates for your location, I'll approve the change. I'd rather publish data from someone on the ground rather than "mindless" data.
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glad to help.
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Erie, Pa. here also. I've (we've) seen it snow in May. Crazy unpredictable in these parts. I've heard the two weeks surrounding Memorial Day is a good rule of thumb here to get stuff in the ground.
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Isn't really helpful for us in Hawaii :/ too bad. I got a little excited!
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"On average, your frost-free growing season occurs between Jan 7 through Dec 25."
Yeah, I think not
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What location was that?
- Edited to add: This data means that you have a chance of getting a frost during only that two week period from Dec 25 through Jan 7th. The rest of the year generally doesn't get frost. If you are in the US, this data came from the National Climatic Data Center.
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Just moved 2000 miles across the country to a new growing area. I've been guessing at planting dates all week until I saw this. Thanks!
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Super impressed. I'm hoping to start a garden this year- better get crackin, according to this thing!
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You have frost?
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Used to live in Hermosa Beach... I've had days in winter where we had 72F on the beach on Saturday and skiing on Sunday.
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This is great thanks! I'm already late for starting my seeds indoors! I gotta step on it. Arizona season starts super early.
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Very cool I was looking for something like this
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Thanks, that is a very helpful resource! I just kind of estimated it based off previous years. I'm glad to see that some of the conclusions I had reached were right.
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It thinks my country does not exist, waste of time.
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You could have added the country for the benefit of the next person. I've timed it and it takes about 8 seconds to add a new location.
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If I knew the frost times sure, kinda the whole point is I don't know them or the info about my location, if I did I wouldn't need the website, and if it takes such a short time why didn't the people who built the website do it?
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wow. that was rude. first off, OP is the developper and seems to be doing the best they can to address issues other posters have brought up. Second, there are kind of a lot of countries in the world.
Personally, i applaud OP for allowing collaboration with the gardening community. I often have trouble with planting sites just being in Canada! Being able to add your country info is pretty awesome!
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It's not rude, have you any idea how often my country is left out of every single system ever created, often we get chopped off world maps because we are inconvenient, spending the time to include only America pisses everybody else off, and pointing it out is not rude, it's making the point that making a website just for America is self centered.
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Lack of data. All the data is made available by the North American governments but is missing from much of the rest of the world, unfortunately.
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Seemingly doesn't work for locations outside the USA...
Yes, I've noticed that's a theme of other American stuff as well. Like shopping online, trying to deliver to US address but it won't let me because my billing address is in Australia. Very annoying. :/
Works for edmonton Canada.
Works for Vancouver Canada. What locations outside of the USA do not work for you?
Australia...
Or in southern Florida...
In South Florida you just plant whenever you feel like it ;-)
Haha I guess so.
Works in North Florida. Dates seem about right. Mar 22 for the last frost as opposed to Mar 15 many places try and claim.
The system is programmed to accept location information. If data is missing, you are given a place to enter in the information if you have it. All it needs to know is your frost dates and it takes it from there.
The US and Canadian governments released all this data to the public domain and that's what I used to build the feature.
The wikipedia page on Hardiness Zones has information about Europe...fwiw...
Hardiness zones (basically, how low can you expect your temperatures to go during an average winter) aren't very helpful for planning when to plant. When your frost ends is what matters and hardiness zones don't speak to that.
Fair point.