Six Weeks Ahead

Start picking meaty, low-moisture plum tomatoes for sauce, paste and canning about eleven weeks after you set this compact plant in the ground.Roma is a determinate paste type that sets most of its crop in a two to three week window, which is exactly...

Cut tall, crisp, sweet-ribbed heads for Caesar salads about two months after transplanting, or pick outer leaves for weeks before that.Romaine is the most heat-tolerant lettuce type, but Alabama spring still catches up with it, so plant early and plan to harvest before daytime...

Pull big, golden, sweet-fleshed roots for mashing and roasting about three months after planting, sweeter still if a few frosts hit them first.Rutabagas are a root crop that resents disturbance, so this comes as a young multi-seeded cell to be set out early and...

Dig slender, oyster-flavored white roots for winter soups and gratins about four months after planting this old-fashioned, nearly forgotten Southern root crop.Like parsnip and carrot, salsify forms a long taproot that hates being moved, so this is sold as a young multi-seeded cell to...

Harvest long, pointed, sweet paste tomatoes prized for authentic sauce roughly eleven to twelve weeks after transplanting this tall, staking-required Italian heirloom.San Marzano is an indeterminate paste tomato that runs six feet or more and keeps producing until frost, so give it a tall...

Shell your first pot of purple hull or crowder peas about two months after planting, from a crop that thrives in Alabama heat.Southern peas are the summer legume that actually enjoys July in Alabama, tolerating heat, drought and poor sandy soil that would flatten...

Cut thick, sweet, dark green leaves about six weeks after transplanting into cool soil, harvesting hard before spring heat pushes the plants to bolt.Spinach bolts fast in Alabama; a spring planting typically has three or four good weeks before lengthening days and 80-degree afternoons...

Pick your first tender yellow squash about seven weeks after planting, then keep picking every day or two to keep the plant producing.Summer squash is fast and generous but short-lived in Alabama, since squash vine borers and squash bugs usually take out spring plantings...

Pull your first sweet, milky ears about ten weeks after planting, with transplants giving you a head start and a jump on the birds.Corn is normally direct-sown, and these transplants exist to get you two or three weeks ahead in cold spring soil and...

Pick thick-walled green bells about ten weeks after planting, or wait a couple more weeks and let them ripen sweet red on the plant.Peppers want warm soil far more than tomatoes do, so hold transplants until nights stay above 55 degrees rather than planting...

Plant these rooted slips in late spring and dig heavy loads of sweet orange roots about one hundred days later, right before frost.Sweet potatoes are sold as slips, which are rooted cuttings pulled from a sprouting mother root rather than seedlings, so plant them...

Pull tender, sweet young turnips in about six weeks, and cut the greens even sooner for a classic Southern mess of turnip greens.Turnips form a taproot and dislike transplanting, so this comes as a young multi-seeded cell meant to go out early and stay...

Set these short-day starts out in winter and pull sweet, mild white bulbs for fresh eating and salsa by late May or June.Onions bulb on day length, not on age, and this is the single most common onion failure in the South: a long-day...

Plant these short-day starts over winter and lift firm, sweet yellow bulbs for cooking and storage in late May or early June.Yellow onions in Alabama must be short-day or intermediate-day varieties; long-day northern types simply will not bulb this far south and are the...

Cut your first glossy green zucchini about seven weeks after planting, then expect more squash than you can give away until the vine borers arrive.Two plants will feed most families, since a healthy zucchini in Alabama produces daily once it starts, and fruit left...