When to Plant Peppers in South Carolina: Spring and Fall Dates, Coastal and Piedmont
What South Carolina’s extension calendar says about peppers, copied region by region, plus the frost record at Charleston International Airport, Columbia Owens Downtown Airport, and Greenville Downtown Airport.
Updated
Figures checked against their sources on ; next check .
Open Clemson Cooperative Extension’s calendar to the pepper line under the heading “Pepper” and you find 2 regions, each with its own spring and fall entries. Piedmont starts latest, on May 1, while Coastal starts on April 1: 30 days between the two. The row carries Clemson’s footnote “From Transplants”, so these dates are for transplants.
What Clemson Cooperative Extension prints for peppers
In Clemson’s spacing table the same crop is listed at 60-70 days to harvest, 36 x 18 inches between rows and plants.
| Region | Spring planting | Fall planting |
|---|---|---|
| Coastal | Apr 1 to May 15 | July 10 to Aug 10 |
| Piedmont | May 1 to Jun 30 | Not recommended |
What to know about this source
Clemson’s planting chart has one pair of columns for the Coastal region and one for the Piedmont, each with a spring range and a fall range. Clemson says that, knowing the days a crop needs to reach maturity, a gardener can work out the planting time for seeds and transplants from the average first and last freeze dates in their area.
Where a cell reads “Not recommended”, the source gives no planting window for that season, and this page leaves it that way.
Starting peppers indoors
None of the figures in this section belong to South Carolina. They are general: UNH, for one, puts the time from seed to transplant at 8 to 10 weeks.
Both crops appear in two of the sources, and peppers always get the longer start: UMN says 9 weeks and UGA 8, against 5 to 6 and 6 for tomatoes. NDSU and Montana State, saved here for tomatoes only, say nothing about peppers.
Once the seedlings are ready, UNH says peppers are safe to set out 2 weeks after the last frost, after hardening off.
| Source | What it says |
|---|---|
| University of New Hampshire | 8 to 10 weeks from seed to transplant; 2 weeks after the last frost is safe to set out |
| University of Minnesota | Mid-March in Minnesota, 9 weeks indoors |
| NC State | Any transplant: seed 6 to 8 weeks before setting out (central North Carolina calendar) |
| University of Georgia | 8 weeks from seed to transplant size (middle Georgia calendar) |
Frost dates for South Carolina cities
Each date below is NOAA’s 50% level, meaning the last spring 32°F night lands on or after it in half the years, and the first fall night lands on or before it in half. The tool linked beside each city shows the other nine levels.
A station is tied to a region of the calendar only where the source’s own wording makes that call; the rest are left blank on purpose.
| Station | Last spring 32°F | First fall 32°F | Region in South Carolina’s calendar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charleston International Airport, South Carolina | March 7 | November 27 | Coastal |
| Columbia Owens Downtown Airport, South Carolina | March 13 | November 19 | Coastal |
| Greenville Downtown Airport, South Carolina | March 16 | November 20 | Piedmont |
| Florence Regional Airport, South Carolina | March 19 | November 13 | Coastal |
| Rock Hill York County Airport, South Carolina | March 31 | November 4 | Piedmont |
Worked example
Start from Columbia Owens Downtown Airport: the station’s median last spring freeze is March 13, and its median first fall freeze is November 19.
Coastal lists April 1 to May 15. Counting from the frost date, that is an opening 19 days after it and a close 63 days after it.
On the fall side, Coastal’s last planting date of August 10 leaves 101 days before the November 19 median first freeze.
The offsets will shift by a few days with every revision of the normals, so use them as a rough guide to which row to trust and not as a deadline.
Before you rely on these dates
The factsheet was last revised in February 2021.
A late cold snap after a mild March is the usual way these windows go wrong; keep a sheet or row cover on hand.
Sources (6)
- Clemson Cooperative Extension Home & Garden Information Center (Millie Davenport), Planning a Garden, HGIC 1256, revised February 12, 2021 hgic.clemson.edu
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, annual and seasonal normals (frost/freeze probabilities by station) ncei.noaa.gov
- University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, Growing Vegetables: When to Plant Your Vegetable Garden (fact sheet) extension.unh.edu
- University of Minnesota Extension, Starting seeds indoors (page reviewed 2026) extension.umn.edu
- NC State Extension (Bradley, Gunter, Sherk and Driscoll), Central North Carolina Planting Calendar for Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs, AG-756-01, published July 8, 2016 content.ces.ncsu.edu
- University of Georgia Cooperative Extension (Bob Westerfield), Vegetable Garden Calendar, Circular 943, published with full review March 10, 2026 extension.uga.edu