Turn the frost window into a season you can actually follow.

Reuse crops from My Garden or choose them here, generate seed-start, sowing, transplant, succession and expected harvest targets, then save the plan locally or export it into your calendar.

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START WITH THE FROST WINDOW

Use frost dates as planning anchors, not guaranteed weather boundaries.

The last spring frost and first autumn frost create a useful frame for many annual crops because they describe the approximate frost-free part of the season. Tiny Mustard Seed can use historical frost context where supported, or you can enter dates from a trusted local source or your own records. Those dates then become anchors for working backwards to seed-start targets and forwards to expected planting and harvest windows.

A frost date is not a promise that every night before or after it will behave normally. A late cold spell, exposed microclimate, urban heat island, valley frost pocket, greenhouse, cold frame or protected bed can all move the practical decision. Use the generated dates to organise work, then re-check the real forecast and garden conditions as each date approaches.

CROP DEFAULTS VS VARIETIES

Broad crop timing gets the calendar started; variety information should make it better.

Different cultivars of the same crop can have different indoor-start lead times, maturity periods, growth habits and harvest windows. The planner therefore treats shared crop timing as a starting point rather than a universal biological rule. When a seed packet, nursery label or reliable variety description gives more specific timing, use the project's editable overrides instead of forcing the variety into a generic number.

This matters most for crops with large differences between early and late cultivars, or where the maturity figure starts counting from transplanting rather than sowing. Protected growing can also change the schedule. The goal is not to produce a calendar that looks precise; it is to make assumptions visible enough that you can replace them with better evidence.

SUCCESSION & HARVEST TARGETS

Turn one planting date into a sequence of manageable garden jobs.

For crops that benefit from repeated sowings, succession planning can spread harvests instead of concentrating everything into one large batch. A generated sequence gives you target dates to review, while the number of successions and interval should still fit your available bed space, household demand and the crop's real seasonal limits.

Expected harvest dates are planning targets derived from the crop timing in the project. They are useful for checking whether a late sowing still fits before the end of the season and for seeing when several crops may compete for harvest time. Temperature, daylight, stress, transplant shock and variety can all change actual maturity, so record what really happens in the Harvest & Yield Tracker and use that experience to improve future plans.

SAVE & EXPORT

A useful season plan should leave the calculator and become part of the real calendar.

The project can keep its working state locally in the browser and export generated events so sowing, starting and transplant targets can sit beside the rest of your schedule. Export is especially useful when the garden has many crops: the plan remains visible without needing to remember which calculator produced which date.

Local-first storage means the browser is part of the data model. If the plan matters, include it in a Tiny Mustard Seed garden backup before clearing browser data or moving devices. Exported calendar or CSV files are separate copies and can be kept wherever you manage normal garden records.