I know this won't be encouraging, but from what I remember in my "Alabama Gardening" book, the last frost date for Central Alabama is about the 23rd of April, I believe. This may vary of course a bit from year to year.

average last frost date is mid to late march for central alabama. here in my garden its been as early as 19 feb and as late as 19 april (ouch....lotsa damage). remember avg frost is just average.....and can vary year to year.

by the last frost date could you mean the latest a frost has occured? from my memory for north central alabama....it is 25 april.

to be on the safe side, i wouldnt plant tender plants til very late march or early april.

I've lived in Birmingham area for almost 57 years. I've taken a particular interest in the weather since I was old enough to plant, especially first and last frost dates. My very generic rule is to EXPECT a frost until April 15 and expect a frost any time after Oct. 10. I usually pull everything out of the greenhouse around April 1 (April Fools day) and I don't usually have to put them back in. But, in 2004, we had a frost around April 9. I had potted up almost two hundred tender plants for the plant swap and for a craft show sale. I had to build a PVC pipe frame and cover them with plastic. Back in the late 1980s, I think it was '87, we had a snow on April 4. In the early 80s, we had a cold spell around the middle of April and I had to cover the tomato and pepper plants. But my April 15 and Oct. 10 rule-of-thumb usually works out.

The average last frost date for Vicksburg, MS is March 13. This being on about the same latitude as central Al, it's probably pretty close.
See the chart at the below link.

Here is a link that might be useful: average last frost date chart

I agree with Tsmith about frost dates. Look up the date of Bear Bryant's death. That was the snow and frost of April (and I think it was 1983).

Here's a link that might help. How to grow tomoatoes. There is also a forum. Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing tomatoes

I had two windows open and I posted to the wrong one! oops!

Well, Friday, April 22 and Saturday, April 23 were good examples of how late a frost is possible. TV weather folks were predicting the possibility of frost as far south as Birmingham with lows at 31*. I did not see any signs of frost but I attribute that to a steady breeze that stirred the warm air near ground level. One TV station said it had not been this cold this late in April since 1979. My rule of thumb for last frost is April 15. Anything earlier is strictly a gamble.

I was in Houston Saturday and Sunday night and although the weather station at the house showed 35 degrees when I looked at it on the internet I came home to find I had lost a habenero pepper all my nice 3 ft watermellon vines about half my squash and it burned the eggplant, bananas and Elephant Ears pretty good so I guess it was a little colder away from the front flowerbeds.

Bob in Morgan County

Bob, sorry to read about your losses. This Blackberry Winter stuff is the pits. There was some fairly decent frost in the lower elevations of my area as well.

On the plus side with the cool weather, I went running Wednesday morning, and the cool, calm air had caused fog to form in the valleys. We have some nice overlooks in my area, and where the hills were peaking up through the fog really gave the impression of islands floating on water. I wish I had my camera with me!!! Looked like a scene from Seattle or San Francisco.

When we look at "the most scientifically prepared country in the world" when it comes to earthquake and environmental safety and then look at the catastrophic (or as prez Obama said "potentially catastrophic" - he's obviously a global warming in-science-we-trust kinda guy) disaster that happened to Japan yesterday it helps to understand how meaningful and really insignificant setting absolute scientific parameters on God's creation is.

During the practice of medicine for 32 years I quickly learned each person is an individual and science is all about theories based on groups of individuals and events driven by a One-Size-Fits-All mentality. A good example is a cancer patient, who will inevitably ask "what are may chances?". The lastest and greatest study may say they've only got a 10% chance of survival, but the truth is their chance is either 100% when they survive or 0% if they do not.

Each year is "an individual" and if you have some moving measure unique to that year it is always going to be more accurate than the average of centuries of climatological data.

Now the question is where can I find such a meter? They were literally everywhere when I was a farm boy going up and everybody watched them and planted accordingly with as near a never fail result as you can get with anything as labile as the seasons. We became a suburban sprawl society and most were considered in the way and got bulldozed so they are harder to find now but a few remain.

Watch the pecan orchard nearest you(if they haven't all been killed to build your subdivision). When they bud you can very very reliably know the last frost has passed. If you find one maybe the government could put a web cam on it for us all to watch! They are so good at spending our money for us why not? LOL ;-)

The traditional planting guide for our part of AL (Gadsden) is Good Friday or April 15. Good Friday varies so much in date that Ap 15 is the better rule of thumb. Rarely there will be a frost later than that, but not often enough to worry about.

James Spann says the average last frost day in March 24th, but warns that we will probably have a frost the first week in April.

You do remember we had an April Fool's day snow a few years ago, don't you?
kay

It's not just the date of the last frost you have to keep in mind. It's also the ground temperature.

Plants like tomatoes may "survive" cooler temps, but won't actually grow well until the ground warms up to 55 to 60 degrees.