Plantout: Frost and Planting Guide for Your Vegetable Garden

Tonight, crop by crop

Frost tonight? Know what to cover.

A plain answer for each crop, every evening.

The forecast low and your garden's estimated low, with its range.
One line for each crop: cover it, wrap the pot, plant out or wait.
An evening alert before a frosty night, and a hot-day alert. Change either or turn it off.

Plantout · tonightThe answers

Each crop gets one line.

cover
wrap the pot or move it to a wall
plant out
wait, keep them in
no cover needed

The advice is an estimate, not an official warning. Check your garden and use your judgement.

Store picture: Frost tonight? Know what to cover. The app's tonight card says Frost possible tonight, and lists which crops to cover, with a numbered instruction for each crop.

This month in your garden

Know what to plant this month.

Sow and plant-out months for your own garden.

See what to sow, start indoors, transplant or plant this month, and what starts next month.
Months come from an approved local planting guide where there is one, and otherwise from Plantout's own estimate, labelled Estimate. Set your own months for any crop.
A guide to 149 food crops: soil warmth to sow, days to harvest and frost limits. Crop names follow your garden's country, like capsicum in Australia and bell pepper in the US.
Companion planting says whether studies tested a pair or it is traditional advice.

Store picture: Know what to plant this month. The October calendar for a garden in Canberra, with sowing months for tomato and capsicum on a twelve-month strip.

Store picture: Every crop, explained. The capsicum crop guide: sow and transplant months, soil temperature to sow, days to maturity and weeks in trays.

Where it works

Tonight's answer works anywhere.

Frost dates and planting months come from the nearest weather station with a long record, within 50 km (31 miles) of your garden. Where none is near, add your own dates.

Plantout · your gardenAU

Australia

Find your garden: Search your postcode or suburb, then check the pin on the map.
Frost dates and planting months: From the nearest weather station with a long record, within 50 km. Where none is near, add your own dates.
Planting months: From an approved local planting guide in parts of the ACT, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. Elsewhere, Plantout's own estimate, labelled Estimate.
Crop names: Capsicum, zucchini, silverbeet, snow pea.
Temperatures: °C.

Plantout · your gardenUS

United States

Find your garden: Search a town or ZIP code, use your location, or drop the pin on the map.
Frost dates and planting months: Your last and first frost dates and your planting months, from the nearest weather station with a long record, within 31 miles. Where none is near, add your own dates.
Planting months: From an approved local planting guide in Georgia, central Maryland and parts of Texas. Elsewhere, Plantout's own estimate, labelled Estimate.
Crop names: Bell pepper, zucchini, Swiss chard, cilantro.
Temperatures: On a US phone, °F, with inches, feet and pounds. Switch to °C any time.

Plantout · your gardenCA

Canada

Find your garden: Search a town, use your location, or place the pin on the map.
Frost dates and planting months: Your last spring frost, your first fall frost and your planting months, from the nearest weather station with a long record, within 50 km. Where none is near, add your own dates.
Planting months: Plantout's own estimate, labelled Estimate. Set your own months for any crop.
Crop names: Sweet pepper, zucchini, Swiss chard, rutabaga.
Temperatures: °C.

Plantout · your plotUK

United Kingdom

Find your garden or allotment: Search a town, use your location, or place the pin on the map.
Frost dates and planting months: From the nearest weather station with a long record, within 50 km. Where none is near, add your own dates.
Planting months: Plantout's own estimate, labelled Estimate. Set your own months for any crop.
Crop names: Courgette, aubergine, mangetout, chard.
Temperatures: °C.

Plantout · your plotIE

Ireland

Find your garden or allotment: Search a town, use your location, or place the pin on the map.
Frost dates and planting months: From the nearest weather station with a long record, within 50 km. Where none is near, add your own dates.
Planting months: Plantout's own estimate, labelled Estimate. Set your own months for any crop.
Crop names: Courgette, aubergine, chard, pepper.
Temperatures: °C.

Plantout · your gardenNZ

New Zealand

Find your garden: Search a town or suburb, use your location, or place the pin on the map.
Tonight's frost answer: Works here, crop by crop, every evening.
Frost dates and planting months: Plantout has no long New Zealand station records yet. Add your own frost dates and set your own months for any crop.

Plantout · your gardenAnywhere

Anywhere else

Find your garden: Use your location, or place the pin on the map.
Tonight's frost answer: Works here, crop by crop, every evening.
Frost dates and planting months: Add your own frost dates and set your own months for any crop.
Temperatures: Choose °C or °F for your garden.

Store picture: Know your frost dates, from the weather station nearest your garden. First frost in autumn and last frost in spring, each with early, middle and late dates, from the Tuggeranong (Isabella Plains) station.

Your garden's memory

Every bed, every season.

See what grows where, and keep dated notes for every bed.

Log your plantings and get reminders to sow, start indoors, transplant and harvest.
A hardening-off plan for seedlings started indoors.
Add the morning reading from a min/max thermometer. From four readings, Plantout uses your garden's own difference from the forecast.
Keep notes in the bed log, and count down to the last frost in the cold months.
A small home screen widget shows tonight's answer for your garden.

Store picture: Every bed, every planting. The garden screen with its frost dates and each planting with its bed and sowing date.

Store picture: Remember every season. The bed log, with dated notes for each bed.

Free and Pro

Free for your garden. Pro for more.

Tonight's answer, the calendar and the crop guide are free. Tap any of the 149 crop pictures to open its crop guide.

Store picture: Browse 149 crops at a glance. A grid of crop drawings, from amaranth to pumpkin.

FreeOne garden

Free

Free covers one garden and up to 12 active plantings, with tonight's answer, the calendar, the crop guide, reminders, alerts and backups.

Plantout ProYearly, monthly or Lifetime

Plantout Pro

Pro adds more gardens and plantings, photos in the bed log, a harvest log with season totals, seed packets with a packet scan, repeat sowings, cover memory across nights, crop heat sensitivity with shade cloth memory, a calibration report and a medium widget with the coming nights.

Pro comes yearly with a 14-day free trial, monthly, or as a one-time Lifetime purchase.

The price is shown in your app store.

For Android, iPhone and iPad. Needs Android 10 or later, or iOS or iPadOS 18 or later.

Your records

No account. No ads.

Your garden records are kept on your phone.

No account needed

Open Plantout, place your garden and start. Your gardens, plantings, notes and photos are kept on your device.

Backups and exports, free

Save a full backup file with your photos, restore it, export spreadsheet files (CSV), or add your planting dates to your calendar, all free.

Never your exact pin

To fetch forecasts, Plantout's own server receives an approximate area of about 5 km, never your exact pin.

Diagnostics with an off switch

Crash diagnostics are on by default, so problems can be fixed. Turn them off in Settings, Diagnostics.

Read the privacy policy Read the terms of use

Sources and credits

Where the answers come from.

The pictures on this page show a garden in Canberra. Its frost dates come from the Tuggeranong (Isabella Plains) station, and its local months from the Canberra Organic Growers Society Planting Matrix. In the app, Settings, Sources and credits lists every source, each credited as it asks.

Tonight's forecast

Data from MET Norway, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, under CC BY 4.0 and NLOD 2.0.

Frost dates and planting estimates

Night lows and monthly averages from NOAA's Global Historical Climatology Network Daily (GHCN-Daily), 1996 to 2025, from the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Local planting guides

Shown by the publisher's permission or open licence. That is not an endorsement of Plantout.

Every local planting guide in the app

Canberra Organic Growers Society
From the Canberra Organic Growers Society Planting Matrix. It cannot be re-used without their permission.
Used for: Canberra and nearby, ACT
Source: Northern Territory Government, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Vegetable Sowing Calendar (IS6 Alice Springs). © Northern Territory Government.
Used for: Alice Springs region, NT (Central Australia)
Source: Northern Territory Government, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Vegetable Sowing Calendar (IS4 Darwin and Katherine). © Northern Territory Government.
Used for: Darwin and Katherine regions, NT (Top End, Darwin to Katherine)
Source: Northern Territory Government, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Vegetable Sowing Calendar (IS5 Tennant Creek and Barkly). © Northern Territory Government.
Used for: Tennant Creek and the Barkly region, NT
Source: Queensland Vegetable Planting Guide for schools, Health and Wellbeing Queensland, © State of Queensland 2025, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Crop names matched to Plantout's crop list.
Used for: Subtropical coastal Queensland (Bundaberg to the Gold Coast)
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension
Used for: Georgia (whole state)
University of Maryland Extension, Home and Garden Information Center
Used for: Central Maryland (Frederick, Howard and Montgomery counties)
Vegetable Garden Planting Dates for Harris County, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Used for: Harris County, Texas
RGV Homeowner Vegetable Guide, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Used for: Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas (Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties)
Lubbock TX (ZONE 7) Planting Calendar, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Used for: Lubbock County, Texas
Vegetable Growing for the Panhandle Garden: Planting Guide for Vegetables, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Used for: Texas Panhandle (26 counties)
Recommended Planting Dates for North Texas, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Used for: Tarrant County, Texas
Credit to the contributors to the North East Planting Guide: Jenny Indian, Louise Pozzebon, Mary Prowse, Steve Oke and Robert Whamond. Produced by the Regional Landcare Facilitators and published by North East CMA.
Used for: North East Victoria (North East CMA area)
Gardens for Harvest program
Used for: Yarra Ranges and Knox, VIC
Source: Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia, Bulletin 4629, Vegetable growing: a guide for home gardeners in Western Australia (2009). © State of Western Australia.
Used for: Northern WA coast, Geraldton to Carnarvon; Perth metropolitan area, WA (coastal plain, under 100 m); South-West districts, WA (Bunbury to Augusta, Collie, Manjimup, Walpole)

Questions

Before you plant.

What does Plantout do?

It tells you what to plant this month in your own garden, and which crops need cover on a frosty night. It works out your frost dates and planting months, gives one line for each crop every evening, and keeps your plantings, reminders and bed log.

Does it work where I live?

Tonight's frost answer works anywhere. Frost dates and planting months come from the nearest weather station with a long record, within 50 km (31 miles) of your garden. Plantout has those records for Australia, the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Where no station with a long record is near, and in New Zealand for now, add your own dates.

Is the frost advice an official warning?

No. It is an estimate, not an official warning. Check your garden and use your judgement.

Do I need an account?

No. Your garden records are kept on your phone. To fetch forecasts, Plantout's own server receives an approximate area of about 5 km, never your exact pin.

What is free, and what does Pro add?

Free covers one garden and up to 12 active plantings, with tonight's answer, the calendar, the crop guide, reminders, alerts and backups. Pro adds more gardens and plantings, photos in the bed log, a harvest log, seed packets with a packet scan, repeat sowings and more. Pro comes yearly with a 14-day free trial, monthly, or as a one-time Lifetime purchase. The price is shown in your app store.

Which devices does it run on?

Android phones and tablets with Android 10 or later, and iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 18 or later. Plantout is coming soon to Google Play and the App Store.

Plantout