When to Plant Strawberries: Fall in the South, Spring in the North

Plant strawberries in the fall if you live in the South, where they grow as an annual crop, and in early spring if you live in the North, where a perennial patch goes in around the last frost. Southern windows run from early September in the North Carolina mountains to December 1 in South Florida. Northern calendars run from March in Chicago to May in Minneapolis.

We put 22 extension calendars next to NOAA frost dates for their cities, counted the days of strawberry-friendly weather for every ZIP code in the lower 48, and tested three hardiness-zone rules against all of them.

Fall or spring? The growing system decides

Strawberries are grown two ways, and each has its own season. In a matted row, you set plants out in spring, pick off the first flowers, let runners fill the row, and pick the following spring. Clemson says matted-row plants go in during the spring of year one and fruit in the spring of year two.⁶ In the annual hill system, often on black plastic, you plant in fall, harvest the next spring and then pull the plants. The South uses the annual system for a reason other than cold:

Because of diseases, two very different production systems are used in Georgia.

Anthracnose often destroys matted rows in middle and south Georgia during their first summer, so the annual hill system is preferred there, while the matted row works best in north Georgia.⁷ Clemson draws the same line between the Upstate and the Coastal Plain.⁶ Texas A&M AgriLife doesn’t recommend the matted row for central Texas at all.⁸

Fall planting dates in the South

Southern extension services publish fall windows by region. In a guide for growers, NC State lists them for North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana.⁵ Texas A&M AgriLife, Clemson, UGA and UF/IFAS publish their own.^8,6,7,4 We measured each one against its city’s NOAA median first fall frost.¹

Two patterns stand out:

• Colder places plant first. NC State starts in the mountains in the first week of September, about eight weeks before Asheville’s median first frost. Wilmington, on the coast, waits until the second week of October, about four weeks before its frost.
• No fixed frost rule fits. The windows sit anywhere from 1.3 to 13 weeks before the median first frost. One top-ranking page gives “6 to 8 weeks before the first frost” without a source; three of the 13 windows with a frost date don’t overlap that range at all.

What the windows share is warmth. At the middle of every one of the 15 windows, the normal daily high is between 75 and 85°F, with a median of 81°F. Texas A&M AgriLife horticulturist Russell Wallace names October as the prime time in Texas and warns against buying plants in spring:⁹

that is really the wrong time of year because it gets too hot, too quickly

Why fall planting works in the South

UF/IFAS explains the season with two numbers. Most varieties need temperatures between 50 and 80°F and days of 14 hours or less to develop flowers and fruit. North of Florida, it says, those conditions occur only briefly in early fall and again in spring.³

We counted those days for every ZIP code from September 1 to June 30, using the normal daily mean temperature and the day length at its latitude. Gainesville, Florida, gets 282 such days, almost the whole season. Austin gets 256 and Macon 211. Minneapolis gets 43, Chicago 74 and Philadelphia 108, split into a fall stretch and a short spring one. Across the lower 48, the median ZIP code gets 92 days.

UF/IFAS’s claim holds up in the data. Only 11.8% of lower-48 ZIP codes keep a normal January mean of 50°F or more, and 1,464 of Florida’s 1,473 ZIP codes are among them. UF/IFAS calls Florida the winter strawberry capital of the world.³

If you are planting late

NC State calls the planting date the most important factor in how many crowns the plants carry in spring.⁵ Late plantings can recover some fall growth under floating row covers, but research it cites from Arkansas found that covers can’t fully make up the lost time. In Austin, Texas A&M AgriLife covers plants with a frost blanket on freezing nights and takes row covers off in February so bees can reach the flowers.⁸

Spring planting dates in the North

Northern extension services plant in early spring. Penn State plants in April and early May and advises against planting after June 1.¹¹ Ohio State calls early spring the best time and doesn’t recommend fall planting, because freezing and thawing can heave plants out of the soil.¹⁴ Oregon State plants as early as the soil can be worked.¹⁶

Sources: University of Minnesota,¹⁵ Illinois Extension,¹² Penn State,¹¹ University of Maryland,¹³ Ohio State¹⁴ and Oregon State.¹⁶

Each of the five calendars with dates falls within about six weeks either side of the NOAA median last frost. That median is a 50% date, so frost is still possible afterward. That is fine for new plants: Clemson says frost generally won’t harm newly set plants.⁶ Open flowers are another matter. Illinois Extension warns that buds, blooms and young fruit are very susceptible to spring frost.¹² Our frost-cover guide shows how to protect them. For your own dates, look up your ZIP code’s frost dates.

In the first summer, remove the flowers from June-bearing plants. Illinois says fruit left on newly set plants delays root and runner growth and reduces the next year’s crop.¹²

Why your hardiness zone can’t pick the season

Most quick answers use a zone line. Google’s AI Overview, citing a short YouTube video, sends zones 8 to 11 to fall planting. Bonnie Plants draws the line between zones 6 and 7, and a Martha Stewart guide sends zones 7 through 10 to fall. We tested the three rules on the 2023 USDA zone of every ZIP code.²

A hardiness zone measures the coldest winter night, as our zone versus frost date explainer shows. It doesn’t measure disease pressure or how long fall stays mild. The map also moves. Between the 2012 and 2023 maps, 2,228 ZIP codes moved from zone 7 into zone 8 and 3,532 from zone 6 into zone 7. A rule tied to the zone number flips for those ZIP codes whenever the map is redrawn. See what changed on the 2023 map, or find your zone by ZIP code.

Does the strawberry type change the date?

A little. June-bearing plants form next year’s flower buds as the days shorten in late summer and fall, says Iowa State,¹⁷ so Northern June-bearers need a full season to build up first. Day-neutral plants fruit in the year you plant them but stop when it is below 40°F or 90°F and above, says Oregon State.¹⁶ Penn State finds they may not perform well in southern Pennsylvania.¹¹ In the South, though, Russell Wallace reports that several day-neutral varieties performed very well in Texas research,⁹ and LSU AgCenter has had good results with day-neutral types in Louisiana.¹⁰

Planning the rest of the garden? See when to plant onions, another crop the South plants in fall, and when to plant tomatoes. Our fall vegetable planting dates cover the crops you harvest before winter, and the other vegetable guides cover the rest.