the last frost.. is usually a week after i decide to plant my most tender plant... Very funny Ken :). you should be well enough introduced to the vagaries of mother nature.. to understand.. that no governmental information is not going to give you an 'good' answer ... I disagree completely. Knowledge is power Ken! And I think such data (weather stats) is best collected and then disseminated via a gov't agency. Having said that I cant find these #s! Up here the Victoria Day long weekend (the holiday is the Monday preceding May 25) is considered the weekend for which most annuals get planted. But clearly this is arbitrary. And given this apparently late spring I want to get my tender plants in the ground as soon as possible ...but I dont want to be reckless. So having knowledge of the "average last frost date" for my location would be useful and worthwhile.

There is a difference between the first frost and the first killing frost. While you might get a night or two where the temperature falls to 30 degrees or so, if you have your pepper plants covered, they'll survive that. I think it will be close to mid-November before you get a night-time temperature of 25 degrees or so, which will probably do them in. Remember, though, that the days are getting shorter and the sun is slipping to the south,so the peppers will be slowing way down in their growth. You might want to cut off all blooms from now on, so they'll focus their energy on the small peppers that have already formed.

Looks good for the Pittsburgh area. We're fifty miles south and use the 20th of May for the spring. Carol

Hi Truck! It depends on what it is you're wanting to plant! If it's "warm season" veggies, they can't take frost at all and would need to be well protected if we got down around or below freezing after they were in the ground. But "warm season" crops don't do well in cold soil and conditions, so it doesn't really help to plant them out "too soon" anyway! "Cool season" veggies (peas, spinach, cole crops, radishes, +) can take frosts (and snow) IF they're well hardened off before they're put into the ground. Things like hardy perennials & herbs (and trees and bushes) can also take frost and snow as long as they've been well hardened off before planting. If any of those things are purchased locally at a garden center where they've been grown outside, they should already be hardened off. But if you pick up something at a big box store or somewhere else where their plants are shipped in from another state (often California or somewhere on the West Coast), they will NOT be hardened off and you'd need to do it yourself in order to be able to safely plant them out. So it just depends on what you're thinking of! Hardy stuff (that does NOT include the "Hardy Boy" brand, which is just a marketing name!) can definitely be planted out when there's still "danger of frost" as long as it's been adequately acclimated. Welcome to RMG, Skybird