You can do it, but it depends on your growing season. It takes X number of days for a plant to start producing. If you sow it in the ground, you count from the sowing date. If you start your warm-weather plants like tomatoes indoors early, you count from the date you transplant them into the garden. I live in the Pacific NW, and it stays too cold for too long here for me to do anything other than start tomatoes (etc) indoors about two months ahead. If I waited until warm weather actually arrived, the plants would probably just start to produce fruit when the first frost cut them down. If you have a long growing season, you might be able to do it, but you're not going to win any races for early production. For tropicals (tomatoes, peppers), if you plant outdoors too early, they may end up rotting before they get a chance to sprout For more info on sowing early, go over to the GW Winter Sowing forum for more info.

With the extreme heat we are still having -- temperatures in the 90s -- I am not sure of the wisdom of setting out transplants of cool weather crops like lettuce etc. right now; you might get some premature bolting. I have seedlings started (a bit late, but better than never), but plan to set them out when the temperature moderates a little, with tops in the 80s. If the summer trend continues, we could have a very long growing season in the fall, but then again the weather is so unpredictable now that we might get a short season. Who knows?

6 week update! It's been exactly 6 weeks since I put out seed, and I actually seem to have a thriving yard of beautiful bermuda grass now. I am very pleased with how the bermuda has established. Quite thick and happy! Having to cut 2 times per week at about 1 inch, and fertilized about 2 weeks ago. yard photo: Unfortunately, my success in getting seed to grow has created my dilemma - CRABGRASS!! I have some areas where the crabgrass is very thick and very happy with all the attention. grass and crabgrass: THICK crabgrass area: I understand that the crabgrass will die out in the fall/winter, but I am concerned that these areas don't have much, if any, bermuda seedlings to establish later. I will end up with large bare areas when the crabgrass dies. How do I ensure that next year the bermuda spreads, but the crabgrass doesn't come back. Cutting it so short now should help keep the seed count down, but there will still be crabgrass seeds. The thick crabgrass areas are large, couple of hundred square feet, mainly along the bulkhead at the back of the yard. Will bermuda actually fill-in and cover an area this large? I am new to bermuda, but realize that bermuda and crabgrass grow and thrive at the same time of year in the summer heat! Should I be trying to kill the crabgrass now to give the bermuda a chance this year, or wait until next year?

Sounds like this is still going to be a mostly shady area. Try perennial rye and creeping and red fescue. If the weather stays warm in October you will have some cover