Georgia’s growing season, measured by NOAA’s 1991-2020 climate normals for the Atlanta area, runs from a last spring freeze of March 11 to March 29 to a first fall freeze of November 13 to December 1. That leaves roughly seven months for a tomato crop, which is enough time for nearly every variety sold for the Southeast to ripen with room to spare. Set your transplants out once your county’s soil has warmed and check that date against the last-frost window before you rely on Atlanta’s reading, since the airport site runs warmer than most of the state.
What this comes down to in Georgia
Sakura hits its first ripe cherry tomato in about 55 days, faster than anything else worth growing in a Georgia garden, and that speed is the whole answer to the timing problem. Sun Gold follows close behind at 57 days, Supersweet 100 at 60, each carrying enough disease resistance and enough frost margin — well over 150 days — to fruit hard until the season actually ends. The short list below is built from that math, not hope.
Sakura
Sakura reaches its first ripe fruit around 55 days from transplant, the shortest on this list, and resists nematodes at an intermediate level along with Tomato Mosaic Virus and two races of Fusarium Wilt at a high level. It’s a snacking cherry tomato, sweet and productive from an indeterminate vine that keeps setting fruit into fall. With a calculated 160 days of margin before the Atlanta-area frost, it’s the variety to plant if you want tomatoes on the table before anything else in the garden.
Sun Gold
Sun Gold finishes at about 57 days and carries high resistance to Tobacco Mosaic Virus and Fusarium Wilt race 1. The fruit is a small, thin-skinned cherry tomato prized for sweetness rather than storage life, best eaten straight off the vine. Its 158-day margin before frost means it keeps producing clusters for the rest of the season with no risk of running out of time.
Supersweet 100
At around 60 days, Supersweet 100 resists Verticillium Wilt and Fusarium Wilt race 1, both at a high level, and sets extremely long trusses of small red cherry tomatoes. It’s a heavy producer suited to snacking and quick sauces, and with 155 days of margin before the fall freeze it has no trouble carrying a full season of harvests.
Jasper
Jasper also reaches first fruit near 60 days and adds something the other cherries on this list don’t: high resistance to Late Blight, plus intermediate resistance to Early Blight. Georgia’s humid summers favor both diseases, so a cherry tomato with that resistance package is worth planting even if you already grow Sun Gold or Supersweet 100. Its margin before frost runs about 155 days.
Amalfi
Amalfi needs about 68 days and resists nematodes, Late Blight and Early Blight, all at an intermediate level. It’s a determinate paste tomato, meaning the plant sets most of its crop in a shorter window rather than trickling fruit out all season, which suits gardeners who want one big batch for sauce or canning. Its 147 days of margin before frost leaves enough time to can before the season ends.
Cherokee Purple
Cherokee Purple, an heirloom slicer with no listed disease resistance, takes about 72 days to first fruit. The dusky pink-purple flesh and rich flavor are the reason gardeners grow it despite the lack of built-in defenses against the fungal diseases common in Georgia’s humid summers. With 143 days of margin before the Atlanta-area frost, timing is not the risk with this variety. Disease pressure is, and that’s a separate problem the state’s Tomato Pests in Georgia: Which Ones Actually Show Up Here page covers in more depth.
Big Beef Plus
Big Beef Plus finishes around 72 days and resists nematodes at an intermediate level, plus Gray Leaf Spot and Tomato Mosaic Virus at a high level. It’s a large, reliable beefsteak for slicing, and the resistance package makes it a steadier choice than Cherokee Purple in a wet year. Margin before frost sits at 143 days.
San Marzano II
San Marzano II runs about 78 days from transplant, with no listed disease resistance, and produces the long, pointed paste tomatoes classic in canned sauce. It’s an indeterminate vine, so it keeps producing new fruit through the season rather than setting one flush. Its margin before frost, 137 days, is still comfortable in the Atlanta area.
Amish Paste
Amish Paste is the longest-season variety on this list at 85 days, an heirloom paste tomato with no disease resistance bred in. It has the tightest margin of the group, 130 days before the average Atlanta-area frost, which is still generous there but is the first variety worth checking twice if you garden somewhere the season runs shorter.
Working it out for your own garden
The method matters more than the specific dates, because it still works if you move counties or the spring runs cold. Start from the frost window itself, not a single date: NOAA’s 1991-2020 normals put the Atlanta-area last spring freeze between March 11 and March 29, and set transplants out from late March to mid April to give the soil time to warm past that range. Count forward using the catalogue’s days-to-maturity figure, which is measured from transplant, not from seed.
A short-season example
Take Sun Gold, at 57 days to first fruit. Add 57 days to a late March transplant and you land in late May; add it to a mid April transplant and you land in mid June. That’s why the catalogue range for first ripe fruit is early June, a spread rather than a single day, because the transplant window itself is a spread. Stack that against the first fall freeze, November 13 to December 1, and there’s a 158-day cushion. Nothing about the calendar limits this variety in the Atlanta area.
A long-season example
Now take Amish Paste, at 85 days. The same arithmetic, late March or mid April transplant plus 85 days, lands first fruit in late June to early July, matching the catalogue’s early July figure. Measured against the Atlanta frost window that’s still a 130-day margin, comfortable by any measure. But that margin is the smallest of the nine varieties here, and it’s the one that starts to matter once you leave the Atlanta reference point, which the next section gets into. If you already worked out your own transplant window using Tomato Planting Dates in Georgia: Counting Back From Your Frost Window, run any variety’s days-to-maturity figure through it the same way before you commit a whole bed to a long-season paste tomato.
What changes across the state
Every figure above is anchored to Atlanta, and Georgia is too large a state for one frost window to describe it. Elevation is the biggest factor: north Georgia and the mountains freeze several weeks earlier in fall than the Atlanta-area date, which shrinks the margin on any variety, and it shrinks the 130-day cushion on Amish Paste faster than the 158-day cushion on Sun Gold. The USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map puts the state anywhere from 6a to 9b, and that seven-zone spread from mountains to coast tells you more about how different the state’s growing seasons are than any single date could.
The coastal plain runs the other direction. Milder winters and later fall freezes there mean the season stretches longer than it does at the Atlanta reference point, so a long-season paste tomato that’s merely comfortable in Atlanta has even more room to work with near the coast. Distance from the coast, not just latitude, moderates both the spring warm-up and the fall cool-down.
None of this changes the days-to-maturity figures on the seed packet. It changes how much margin those figures buy you once you apply your own frost window instead of Atlanta’s. A gardener in the mountains growing the same Amish Paste should treat the 130-day Atlanta margin as a ceiling, not a guarantee, and lean toward the shorter end of the nine varieties here instead.
The mistakes this state punishes
The most common mistake is planting into cold soil right after a warm stretch, because Georgia’s spring weather swings enough that a few 70-degree days in early March feel like permission to set transplants out weeks before NOAA’s own freeze-probability window has passed. A late frost after that early planting doesn’t just kill the plant, it costs you the whole days-to-maturity clock and pushes first fruit back by however long it takes to replant and restart growth.
The second is choosing a long-season variety in a part of the state where the season doesn’t support it. Amish Paste at 85 days is a fine choice at the Atlanta reference point, but the same variety in a shorter-season mountain garden eats into a margin that’s already the tightest of the nine varieties covered here. Match the days-to-maturity number to the season you actually garden in, not the one printed for the state as a whole.
The third is timing disease and pest pressure by the calendar instead of by the plant. Waiting until symptoms are obvious to act against something that arrives on a predictable schedule usually means the damage is already done. The specifics of which pests show up when in Georgia, and what to watch for, belong on the Tomato Pests in Georgia: Which Ones Actually Show Up Here page rather than repeated here, but the mistake itself is the same shape as the frost mistake: acting on what the weather feels like instead of what the data says.
Checking this against your county
Every date and margin in this article is built on one weather station near Atlanta. That’s a reasonable starting point, but it is not your county’s frost date, and the gap can run to several weeks in either direction depending on elevation and distance from the coast. Before you lock in a planting date for any of the nine varieties above, check your own county’s extension office through UGA Extension for local frost data and variety notes specific to your part of the state. If you haven’t already worked out your general planting sequence, the state-level overview in growing tomatoes in Georgia is the place to start before narrowing down to a variety list like this one.
Common questions
Can I grow Amish Paste in north Georgia or is it too risky?
It’s not ruled out, but its margin before frost is the tightest of the varieties covered here, and north Georgia’s mountains freeze earlier in fall than the Atlanta reference point this article is built on. Check your county extension office’s local frost data before committing a full bed to it, and consider Amalfi or San Marzano II as paste alternatives with a bit more room.
Do the disease resistance codes actually matter in Georgia’s climate?
Yes, especially for the fungal and viral pressures that build up in humid summers. A variety like Big Beef Plus, with high resistance to Gray Leaf Spot and Tomato Mosaic Virus, tends to hold up better through a wet Georgia summer than an heirloom like Cherokee Purple that carries no listed resistance, even though both finish in a similar timeframe.
Is 55 to 60 days really that much faster than 78 to 85 days in practice?
In terms of frost risk, no, both groups finish with months to spare in the Atlanta area. The real difference is when you start eating tomatoes and how long the harvest window runs, since the shorter-season cherries like Sakura and Sun Gold ripen weeks earlier and then keep producing, while the longer-season slicers and pastes deliver a later but often larger single crop.
Should I start with transplants or seed to hit these days-to-maturity numbers?
All the days-to-maturity figures above are counted from transplant, not from seed, so starting with a nursery transplant or a well-hardened seedling you raised yourself is what the catalogue numbers assume. Starting from seed outdoors adds several weeks before you reach the same starting line.