Count a Whole Garden Back From Your Last Frost Date — Free
Seed packets tell you to sow 'after the last frost', which is advice for a climate you do not live in. Everything before that date — ordering seed potatoes, sowing onions indoors, booking the polytunnel repair — has its own lead time, and they are all counted back from the same day. This card takes your frost date and each job's lead time, and files them in the order the deadlines arrive.
The proof surface
Free path: the card computes locally in the browser with no key and no account. Where an AI step helps, any free chat assistant works — Google AI Studio's free tier and Groq's free tier were both no-card and rate-limited when this page was reviewed on 2026-09-13 (limits change; check before you rely on them).
Why the flat version breaks
A gardening calendar is organised by month, not by your plot: it cannot know that a May frost date makes an indoor sowing a February job. Counting each job back from the one date your garden actually turns over turns a wall calendar into a list of start-by dates for your own soil.
How to use the seed packet index card in four passes
Watch the plot for two seasons, or ask the neighbour who has been there twenty years. A frost pocket, a north-facing bed or a clay soil can be three weeks later than the town two miles away.
An indoor sowing under heat needs eight to ten weeks; a bag of compost needs a weekend. The card cannot know the difference, so put the honest number on the row.
Seed potatoes sell out, polytunnel panels take three weeks, and a bulk compost delivery needs a slot. Those rows are the ones that quietly decide whether the season starts on time.
A warm February or a late cold snap shifts the frost date, and every row shifts with it. Change the date and re-file rather than adding days in your head.
SAMPLE DATA, NOT A VERIFIED CLAIM: Ilkley, north-facing clay · last frost 8 May 2027 · chillies sown indoors 70 days before · seed potatoes ordered 45 days before · polytunnel panel 35. Replace these values with your own source before you rely on anything.
What breaks first
Sowing to the packet's month rather than your date
'Sow February to April' assumes a climate. Your frost date plus the packet's lead time is the number that applies to your plot.
Leaving out the jobs that are not plants
Water keys, manure deliveries, shed repairs, netting and labels. They have the longest lead times and the shortest memory.
Planning one frost date for two microclimates
A polytunnel and an open bed are different gardens. If you have both, run the card twice with two dates — a single date will have one of them wrong.
What you pay otherwise
| The usual route | What it leaves out | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| A printed regional planting calendar | A month-by-month average for a county, not for your plot | a season sown two weeks out |
| A gardening-app subscription | Reminders based on your postcode, your data in their account | an annual fee |
| Buying seed in April | The varieties you wanted are gone and the sowing window has closed | a season of a crop you did not grow |
| This page + the free seed packet index card | Computed in your tab, result on screen before you type anything | $0 |
Try the free seed packet index card
Twelve garden jobs are already filed against an 8 May 2027 frost date, with the 70-day indoor sowing at the top and the planting-out row dated on the day itself. Move the frost date to 29 May and every start-by date shifts three weeks.
Open the free seed packet index card →Keep the work if you will use it again
Every job, every start-by date and the lead-time ordering, plus copy and share-link, with no account.
The on-screen result is free and repeatable forever. The one-time tier adds a tangible file you keep and the saved history that comes with it; it never removes or degrades the free result.
Boundary: This does date arithmetic on the frost date and lead times you type in; it is not horticultural advice and it cannot know your soil, aspect or microclimate. Check sowing times against the seed packet and your own observations, and treat any frost date as an estimate rather than a guarantee.