Checklist
Garden season checklist
This is a task list for a first vegetable season, ordered around your own average last spring frost and first fall frost. It has no calendar dates, because yours are different from everyone else's. Pair it with the planting date helper to turn each step into a date. Tick as you go, or print it and pin it up.
Your ticks are saved only in this browser, on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How to use this
Read it once, then tick items as you do them, not before. The headings count from your last spring frost, so a "2 to 6 weeks before" step lands in a different month in a cold region than in a mild one. The helper turns those weeks into dates once you enter your own frost date. In mild-winter regions the cool season can run through winter, so the order of the lists stays but the calendar shifts. Where a step conflicts with what your local extension office publishes, follow your local office.
Limits
This is a general planning list for a home vegetable bed, not a guarantee of results. Frost dates are averages and a frost after the average date is still possible. Soil, pests and weather vary from garden to garden. Call your local utility-locating service before significant digging, and use caution with any electrical equipment near water.
Where this comes from
The timing offsets, seed-starting lead times, hardening-off period, frost protection steps and fall planting rule follow university extension planting guidance, mainly the University of New Hampshire Extension vegetable planting fact sheet, cross-checked against Colorado State, Maine and Illinois extension guides. The wording of the steps follows the guides on this site. Soil-warmth crops such as beans follow extension notes that they go in after the last frost.