Pick your town. This works out what is due this week from your nearest of 78 Michigan frost stations and the planting rules MSU Extension publishes. Where Michigan sources give no rule, it says so instead of guessing.
Nearest frost station: Bay City.
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Make it fit your garden
Status today, the dates that set it, and the MSU rule behind it. The bars show the crops with dated windows. MSU gives no last date for planting out or sowing, so those bars stop at July 31, where this tool's spring rules end. That is a display limit, not a deadline.
| Crop | Status | For your station | Rule |
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Planting rules: MSU Extension, How to Plant Vegetables and MSU Extension tomato tips. Frost dates: Michigan State Climatologist via MSU Extension.
Built by Chris Izworski at Freighter View Farms, Bay City.
The fastest path into the Michigan garden guides is the question you actually have: a city-specific calendar, a warm-season transplant date, or a tomato variety that can finish in Michigan.
Michigan gardening lives and dies on timing. These five resources answer when to start, when to transplant, when the soil is warm enough, and how to read your actual frost risk instead of guessing from a generic last-frost date.
Seed-starting, transplant, direct-sow and fall-sow windows for 47 crops at your nearest of 78 Michigan frost stations, with this week's jobs, a season timeline and a calendar file to save.
Open the calendarAll 78 State Climatologist stations with the 75, 50 and 25 percent last-freeze dates and the latest on record, a frost-risk chart, and a check of any planting day in plain odds.
View frost dataWhat a "last freeze date" means and how to read the odds, with Bay City and ten other Michigan stations from the State Climatologist table, and how to look up your own station in NOAA's normals.
See the tableWhat to start indoors this week for any USDA zone or your own frost date, with a season timeline, plus lights, heat and hardening off explained.
Start your seeds rightToday's measured soil temperature at your nearest MSU weather station, a 16-day forecast checked against it, and the date it should pass MSU's 40°F and 60°F planting temperatures, with the station's past springs.
Check your soilTomatoes teach you more about Michigan gardening than any other crop because they demand so much patience in a short-season climate. These two pages cover timing and variety selection together: everything the tomato question actually requires.
Not just a date: a soil temperature reading, a hardening-off schedule, and a week-by-week Zone 6a timeline from seed start through June 15 frost protection. Includes a regional comparison table from Detroit to the Upper Peninsula and a complete variety timing breakdown.
Plan your tomato seasonTen variety profiles with days to maturity, disease notes, and field observations from Freighter View Farms. Covers Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim, Mortgage Lifter, Stupice, Green Zebra, and more.
Browse varietiesThe seasonal writing, what worked, what the late frosts actually did, how August heat affects productivity. That writing lives on the Freighter View Farms blog, not in a guide format. That's where the real notes are kept.
Read the blogHeirloom seed saving is the reason Freighter View Farms exists. These pages cover the theory, the practice and the tools: what open-pollinated means and why it matters, the step-by-step procedures for saving from your best plants.
A complete, honest comparison that doesn't romanticize heirlooms or dismiss hybrids. Covers genetics, breeding history, flavor, disease resistance, yield, and the practical question of which type belongs where in a Zone 6a Michigan garden.
Read the comparisonCrop-by-crop procedures covering fermentation for tomatoes, dry processing for beans and squash, isolation distances to maintain variety purity, and long-term storage methods that keep seed viable for five or more years.
Learn seed savingRegion-by-region directory of free seed lending programs and annual swap events across Michigan, from Bay City libraries to UP garden clubs. Find seeds near you.
Browse the directoryPick two crops, or list your whole garden, and get a plain yes or no on whether they can cross, the distance that keeps seed true, and what to do this season. 51 crops, with the sources behind every answer.
Check your plantsFive answers about your zone, sun, space, experience and goal give three heirlooms that suit your garden, why each fits, whether it ripens before frost, and how to save its seed.
Find your threeWhat goes next to what, and what belongs in a Saginaw Bay yard. These two pages cover the ecological side of garden planning: companion planting with real evidence, and native plants for Zone 6a lakeshore conditions.
Eight planting combinations that work in Zone 6a, each with evidence cited. Four combinations to avoid and why. Four ready-to-use bed plans. No gardening folklore presented as fact. Only what holds up under scrutiny.
Plan your bedsNative plants sorted by sun exposure, moisture needs, and wildlife value for the lower peninsula. Includes species suited specifically to Saginaw Bay lakeshore conditions, bloom time for pollinator succession, and sourcing guidance.
Browse native plantsFreighter View Farms is four raised beds and a stretch of south-facing in-ground space on the shore of Saginaw Bay in Bay City, Michigan. Managed by Chris Izworski, the garden grows primarily open-pollinated vegetables with a focus on seed saving and variety preservation.
The name comes from the view. On a clear morning in late May, you can watch a lake freighter move across the horizon while you decide whether it is finally warm enough to plant. Most mornings in May, it is not. You wait another week.
Zone 6a Michigan has a specific climate that general gardening resources rarely account for well. The Saginaw Bay lakeshore delays spring warming. The late frost dates are real, not dramatic. The Bay City station's 154 frost-free days, median to median, are workable but unforgiving when tomatoes go in too early.
Every page in this collection is grounded in Bay City conditions and checked against MSU Extension and NOAA data. If you grow anywhere in the lower peninsula, the timing should be close enough to useful. Add a week if you are on the lakeshore. Subtract a few days inland.
The guides above are the reference material. The writing about what gardening actually feels like in Bay City, across seasons and years, lives at Freighter View Farms. Seed starting notes in February. What the May 8 frost actually did. What you replant in September when the beds open back up.