Once the last frost is past, the soil is warm and the nights stay warm, it’s safe to plant warm weather vegetables. These vegetables can’t tolerate any cold temperatures. I usually wait until Memorial Day weekend to plant this type of vegetable, just to be safe.
Warm weather vegetables include tomatoes, peppers, summer squash like zucchini, green beans, cucumbers, corn, eggplant, pumpkins, water melon, winter squash, sweet potatoes and annual herbs like basil.
These should be planted as soon as it’s safe as some warm weather vegetables like tomatoes and pepper take all summer to produce vegetables. They can be covered once the weather turns colder, but growth and production will be much slower, if at all. I plant early enough, but still sometimes have vegetables that are almost ready when cold weather hits, but not quite and end up covering them to get the last bit of life out of them.