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Well officially our last frost date is April 20th. However there will still be a 20% chance of frost after that. In years where we have had a long cold winter, and cold weather after the first day of spring, I have noticed that it is more like 80% chance.

At any rate, the extension office plant dates are a bit later than you would expect based on the April 20 date, but I think that is probably to err on the side of caution.

I have learned with Missouri weather it pays to be cautious, if you don’t want to have to make double plantings. Since I have been gardening, we have only had one year that planting early would have worked. That means 75% of the time planting early means failure.

Back to our discussion of early planting times. We are in the Ozark Plateau area of Missouri, so our planting schedule is the same as Northern Missouri. Which is after the mid Missouri and boot-heel regions, because of the higher elevation.

So I have done a little more research on peas. Turns out the Missouri Extension schedule/planning article(not to mention all the others) didn't tell the whole story on spring planting. They show no indoor germinationfor peas.

I have used this guideline, since the 1st year of planting. According to that, we should plant peas out side beginning with 3/25 and beets starting on 4/01. So that's what I have always done.

I don't know why I didn't put two and two together before, but here's the deal: the best soil temps for germination for these veggies is 70 degrees and above. Yet, the plants themselves grow better in a cool temperature below 70.

Peas in particular, can have an issue with fursarium wilt, which numerous articles from many sources have never mentioned. If it strikes, it appears when the temps reach 70 degrees, and cuts short the harvest(also never mentioned in articles I've read on this wilt issue).

Now our temps have been bouncing around between the 40s and 30s most of the nights so far, and often during the day. Peas take 36 days to germinate at 41 degrees. What a joke - why would anyone want to plant them outside now and wait over a month for germination? Especially when the harvest needs to start and be complete in May? (June is hot enough for the wilt for sure)

Then, say the peas have 70 DTM? Sometime in May we begin to have 70 degree temps, which means the harvest is about to be in jeopardy.

Seems to me that what they should have advised is to start those peas indoors a week or a few weeks sooner, so that the peas can germinate, and get some growth and then be transplanted in April so that they can mature sometime at the end of April, and harvest the first few weeks in May.

So then looking at all the other soil temps and germination times, best times are all at 70+ degrees or above. So seems to me that the same could be said for cukes, as I have had trouble with fussarium wilt with them for sure.

So I am going to start a bunch of stuff that is normally planted outside this time of year, in paper cups, so that I can just peel off the paper and transplant with as little trama to the roots as possible, and see how that experiment works. Then next year I'll start about 2 weeks earlier for these to see how that works, and also try to get the shortest DTM possible. The other stuff I have grown successfully will stay on the MU Extension Schedule.