Last Frost Date

Fall planting: garlic, bulbs and cool-weather crops

Last checked October 25, 2026

Fall is a second planting season. Cool-weather vegetables sown in summer can be harvested up to and past the first frosts, garlic goes in for next summer, and spring bulbs go in for next spring. All of it is timed from your first fall frost.

Fall vegetables: count back from the first frost

Virginia Cooperative Extension's guide to fall vegetable gardening gives a simple method for the latest date you can sow a crop and still harvest it:

  1. Start with the crop's days to harvest, from the seed packet.
  2. If you grow your own transplants, add the days from seed to transplant.
  3. Add the average harvest period, if you want to keep picking for a while.
  4. Add a "fall factor" of about two weeks, because plants grow more slowly in the cooler, shorter days of fall.
  5. For crops that frost kills (beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes), add two more weeks, so they finish before the frost.

Count that many days back from your typical first fall frost. Some examples, using the typical days to harvest in Colorado State University Extension's planting guide:

Those are the latest dates, for the harvest-period step left out. Sowing a week or two earlier gives you a longer picking season. Your ZIP code's planting calendar lists these dates already worked out.

Virginia Cooperative Extension notes that cool-season crops such as kale, turnips, mustard, broccoli and cabbage grow well in cool fall days and withstand light frosts, and that some of the best-tasting vegetables of the year come from fall's warm days and cool nights.

Sowing in summer heat

Fall crops are sown in the hottest, driest part of the year, which is hard on seeds. The same guide suggests sowing when the soil is moist after a rain, or watering the bed thoroughly the day before. Cover seeds about twice as deep as you would in spring. A light mulch keeps the soil cool and moist, but keep it thin enough for seedlings to push through.

Leaving crops in over winter

Some crops can stay in the garden into winter. Virginia Cooperative Extension lists kale, spinach, bunching onions, lettuce, parsley, parsnips, carrots and salsify as crops that may survive all winter, mulched with about 8 inches of mulch to keep the soil from heaving. You can dig or pick them as needed.

Garlic

Garlic is planted in fall and harvested the next summer. The University of Minnesota Extension's advice:

Spring bulbs in cold-winter places

Tulips, daffodils, crocus and hyacinths need to grow roots in fall, before the ground freezes. The University of Wisconsin–Madison Extension says to plant when the ground has cooled to about 50 to 55°F but isn't frozen, and to keep planting until a couple of weeks before it freezes. A soil thermometer takes the guesswork out of it.

In Minnesota, the university's extension service says planting usually runs from mid-September to mid-October.

Spring bulbs in mild-winter places

In the South, the soil stays warm much later, and many bulbs don't get the winter cold they need to bloom. Clemson University's Home and Garden Information Center, writing for South Carolina, advises:

Your fall dates

All of this hangs on one date: your typical first fall frost. Look up your ZIP code to find yours, along with the early-year date, when 1 fall in 10 has already had a frost.

Sources

More guides: What your last frost date really means · Hardiness zones, and what changed on the 2023 map · How to protect plants from a late frost · Starting seeds indoors: when and how