When to plant tomatoes in Georgia

Georgia is not one climate. It holds 4 USDA zones, and tomatoes go in the ground as early as 17–31 March in zone 9a and as late as 18 April – 2 May in zone 7b. Find your zone below.

Georgia is two climates wearing one name. The mountains in zone 7b get eight days a year above 90°F; the coast in 9a gets eighty-two. That is a tenfold difference inside one state, and it is why the dates below move by a month from the Blue Ridge to the Golden Isles. UGA’s method for the fall crop is arithmetic rather than heat: take the first frost, count back the days the variety needs to ripen, and add eighteen more for picking. Their hard rule is nothing goes in after 20 July.

Tomatoes in Georgia, by zone. Plant-out windows, worked out from each zone’s own frost dates.
Zone	Last frost	Plant out (spring)	Plant out (fall)	Days ≥90°F
9a	10 March	17–31 March	11–25 July	82
8b	20 March	27 March – 10 April	3–17 July	74
8a	31 March	7–21 April	25 June – 9 July	47
7b	11 April	18 April – 2 May	15–29 June	8

Not sure which zone you are in? The app works it out from your postcode.

Where these dates come from

The frost dates for Georgia are NOAA’s 1991–2020 US Climate Normals — the 50% probability of a 32°F freeze, taken per zone from the weather stations standing in each one. The fall window follows UGA Extension Circular 963, vegetable planting chart. Everything else on this page is arithmetic on those two dates: the same inputs give the same answer every time.

Made only for gardeners in the United States

Your zone is one number about one winter night.

Every date above is worked out from Georgia’s own frost records and its summer heat, read together — which is why two gardens in the same zone can be a month apart. ZoneSprout does that for 2,700 plants, in every zone of every state, and tells you what to do this week.

Get ZoneSprout How the dates are worked out