Tomato

Northwest Florida gets a spring crop and a fall crop, with a midsummer gap where night temperatures are too high for fruit to set. The fall planting is the one most often got wrong: it is set out in the heat of August so that it flowers as nights cool in September. UF/IFAS closes the North Florida window at the end of August while Central Florida runs to the end of September and South Florida into February, so what makes this one unforgiving is how short it is, not how early. Transplants are raised under cover for the spring crop.

From the guide: UF/IFAS gives the North Florida planting dates for this crop as late March to April, and again August. It gives 90–110 days from seed to harvest, or 70–90 from transplants, 18–32 inches apart in rows 48 inches apart, sown ¼–½ in. deep. On the crop itself it says: Staking/supporting and mulching are beneficial. Flowers self-pollinate. Blossom drop is usually due to too high or too low temperatures and/or excessive nitrogen fertilization. Cherry types are heat resistant. The days-to-maturity figure on this entry is the one measured from transplanting, because that is what its planting window marks.

Where these dates come from: the North Florida column of the UF/IFAS Extension Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide (SP 103/VH021), which defines North Florida as everything above State Road 40. Walton County is well inside it, and the Central and South Florida columns of the same table give different months. The guide is written for home and market gardens, so its spacing and days-to-harvest figures are a starting point for a field planting rather than a commercial schedule, and days to harvest varies by variety.