Check with your state's Extension Service. Each county should have it's own Cooperative Extension Office which provides free publications and information for the asking. They will have valuable vegetable/gardening tables available specifically for your area determined by universities and horticultural research scientists who have collected data from growing those crops in your state. Your tax dollars are already paying for this service so you may as well get some use out of it. Vegetable Planting and Planning Calendar for Missouri (download the pdf) complete with spring and fall planting dates (underneath the spring planting dates for appropriate crops), how much to plant per person, etc. They can also tell you the average last frost date for your area and ideal planting times for specific crops and varieties in your area. See how detailed these examples are:

What to plant following what was planted depends. Cool season plants sucha as peas can be followed by tomatoes, peppers, etc. Cool, and long season plants such as the cabbage family will be there for the full growing season most places. Beans could follow lettuces which could then follow the beans. Lay out your garden and look at what you want to grow and which need to be in early and will fade out in heat. Then look at what you want to grow that should be planted during really warm weatehr and see where it fits in the total plan.

Interesting discussion. Reading what others have said set me to thinking. It seems it would be best to consider growing foods that give high yield with not a lot of effort and they have to be foods that I like! I would definitely do sweet potatoes and some kind of bean. But what foods can you grow without the use of pesticides in Florida? I would use onions, garlic and herbs to help keep some of the bugs away. I've read also that some insects don't like marigolds. I'd have to research more on using plants to protect other plants from bugs. Of course, citrus fruits, mangoes and bananas. I read recently about a peach tree that has been developed to grow in Florida. Tomatoes, squash, peanuts. I like the idea of chickens for fresh eggs, but I couldn't slaughter them myself. (Yeah, I'm a wimp.) And a dairy cow would be useful too. But if things got really bad and you couldn't get butter or vegetable oils, I guess olives would be nice.I have no idea how many trees you'd need to be able to press enough oil to make it worth while and if you've got olives,capers would be nice too. I would really have to try growing coffee.

Carol, I bet it did grow well there in spite of the short growing season. I'm assuming they started their transplants indoors to get them large enough to plant out once the temps were in the appropriate range. And it is the exposure to sunlight that made the celery so green. Most commercially-raised celery is that whitish-green because the celery is blanched. I think the blanching is intended to keep the stalks tender as too much sunlight/heat gives you tougher stalks. Seedmama, Here's how Jeff Cox grows celery: GROWING CELERY: Several years ago I purchased a book by Jeff Cox called "Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas". It is a terific book and I love it. One of his ideas is a way to grow celery even if you can't give it the marshy conditions it prefers. If I ever tried to grow celery here, I'd try Jeff's method. To start his seeds, he sows them 10 weeks before his last frost. He soaks his seed overnight before sowing them in peat pots and setting them on top of the fridge so the heat can help them sprout, which can take 2 weeks or longer. He digs a below-grade trench about a foot wide and 14" deep although he says you can do the same process with a raised bed if you'd rather build up than dig down. If growing in a raised bed, he recommends a minimum height of 6" and cautions anything raised any higher may get too hot for the celery. You still need 14" of depth, but with the 6" tall raised bed, you only have to dig down 8" instead of the whole 14". You remove the soil to a depth of 14" for the trench or 8" beneath the eventual raised bed and remove all the soil. Add compost and other organic amendments to create an enriched growing mix that will hold lots of moisure and refill the trench or, for the raised bed, refill the dug-out area and build the 6" tall raised bed above it. By the way, he recommends six celery plants per person. If you want, you can add tin cans with the tops and bottoms both removed or pieces of PVC pipe inserted vertically into the ground about to the same depth that your celery is planted, or a couple of inches deeper than that. To water, fill each can or piece of pipe with water and let the pipe carry the water down to the root level of the celery plants. In the illustration in the book, he has one vertical can or PVC pipe in between two celery plants in a sort of checkerboard pattern. (Texas tomato plant growers use this method to water tomatoes, only they use large flower pots or huge, instituitional-sized cans, to water the tomato plants...it is called the Texas Pot method.) After you harden off your seedlings, transplant them into the enriched soil which you've pre-moistened so it it nice and damp. He waters his transplants with an organic fertilizer consisting of 1 T. fish emulsion and 2 T. seaweed extract per one gallon of water. Mulch the top of the bed with leaves. As the plans grow keep adding leaves so the stalks are blanched. Blanching celery stalks (but not their topgrowth leaves which need sunlight to grow) helps improve their flavor and keep them tender. This is especially important in a hotter climate where heat stress can cause the stalks to get woody and tough. He recommends feeding monthly and watering as often as needed to keep the bed moist and damp but not soaking wet. His recommendation is that you harvest the plants roots and all before frost arrives in the fall. Store them in a box in a cool basement or similar area. If the storage area stays cool enough, celery will store for months. You also could store them in an extra fridge in your garage or laundry room or whatever. If you ever run across Jeff's book, it is a wonderful book with projects grouped by the season. Dawn