the long term weather is not going to dip below the 40's ,so based on your experience I'll put them outdoorsFrancis Barnswallow wrote:From my experience, my peppers survived approx. 6 freezes and are 2+ years old. I never covered them during the freezes we got those years. After the freezes hit I thought they were dead, but they just kept coming back and producing peppers. And I planted them in the garden as seed in January 2010.
They didn't do much when I first planted them, but once the warmer temps arrived, they became very productive ever since. Then again, I'm in Orlando.
If I were you, I'd wait until the first week of May (just to be sure there are no more crazy cold snaps like eastern half the country just had) to transplant them.
Check out wunderground.com for weather details. Very useful weather site.
You suggested a Google search for better information, so this is not an argument. Just additional input. That map seems to based on the dates beyond which there is a 90% chance that there will be frost at some point. The dates become much later when you take the frost likelihood down to 10%. The map puts me on the border between a April 15 and May 1 last frost date. We just about always have frost in early May. It's April 25 now and we just had a frost 2 nights ago.jal_ut wrote:[url=https://www.weather.com/maps/activity/garden/usnationalnormallastfreeze_large.html]Map[/url]
Take a look at this map. The weather is fickle, however records have been kept long enough to get an average for the last frost in all areas. I wait until seven days past the average last frost here to plant out tomatoes and peppers. That puts me right at June 1. It works most years.
The date of avg. last frost for your garden is very useful. Do a Google search, you may find info that is better than this map for your locale.