ZoneSprout

When to plant Tomatoes Texas Zone 8b

Texas · USDA zone 8b

When to plant tomatoes in zone 8b, Texas

Texas zone 8b averages its last frost on 15 March and its first on 16 November — 245 days between them. Every window below is worked out from those two dates and from the 102 days a year this zone spends at or above 90°F.

Spring planting

Sow indoors18 January – 1 February
Plant out22 March – 5 April
Harvest16 May – 8 August

Fall planting

Sow indoors4–18 May
Plant out6–20 July
Harvest30 August – 16 November
The fall transplant goes in during the worst of the heat, and that is not a mistake. Texas A&M puts fall tomatoes in the ground on 1 July in this region with a hard cut-off of 25 July, so the plant is full-sized and flowering when the nights finally drop in September. Plant it in August and you are hoping for a harvest that no longer has time.

Two things worth knowing that the dates alone will not tell you. Choose a heat-setting variety — Celebrity, Solar Fire, Tycoon and Heatwave are the ones AgriLife names for this — because an ordinary beefsteak set out in July will flower and drop every one. And start the seed later than you would in spring: five or six weeks before that early-July plant-out is enough, and a transplant held longer than that in a Texas July goes in the ground already stressed.

Zone 8b is not zone 8b everywhere

15 states contain zone 8b. They share a coldest winter night and almost nothing else: the last frost spans 10 March to 17 April, and the number of days at or above 90°F runs from 3 to 114. A planting calendar that stops at “zone 8b” is giving all 15 the same advice.

Zone 8b, state by state. Texas in bold.
StateLast frostFirst frostSeasonDays ≥90°F
LA 10 March 15 November 248 days 89
MS 14 March 12 November 244 days 82
AR 15 March 12 November 242 days 79
FL 15 March 13 November 241 days 94
TX 15 March 16 November 245 days 102
NV 16 March 13 November 237 days 112
AL 17 March 13 November 242 days 75
GA 20 March 13 November 238 days 74
SC 22 March 12 November 238 days 72
VA 23 March 17 November 240 days 36
NC 24 March 13 November 236 days 45
AZ 1 April 10 November 220 days 114
WA 8 April 2 November 209 days 3
OR 12 April 1 November 201 days 17
CA 17 April 11 November 204 days 82

Other zones in Texas: see all Texas zones for tomatoes.

Where these dates come from

The frost dates for Texas are NOAA’s 1991–2020 US Climate Normals — the 50% probability of a 32°F freeze, taken from weather stations standing inside zone 8b itself, not averaged across the state. The fall window follows Texas A&M AgriLife EHT-056 Tables 1-3 (Region III = USDA 8). 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 Texas’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.

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