What to Plant in Florida Each Month (A Simple Planting Calendar)

If you grew up gardening anywhere north of here, Florida is going to mess with your head, and I want to get ahead of it before it costs you a season. Up north, summer is the big show. Down here that calendar is close to backwards. Our summer is the hard part, the season that wilts tomatoes and rots roots, and our easy, generous growing runs from fall straight through spring. Once that clicks, gardening here stops being a fight. Let me take you through the year the way it actually feels.

One quick note before we start. North Florida runs a couple of weeks behind Central and South Florida. If you are up near the Georgia line, lean toward the later edge of every window and you will be right.

January and February, the cool and easy stretch

This is some of the best growing of your whole year, so do not let the calendar fool you into thinking winter means rest. January is prime time for the cool-season crew, lettuce, kale, collards, mustard, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes, and onions all love these mild days. Keep a little frost cloth handy and you will sail through. In February, keep all that going, but start thinking ahead. This is when I want you starting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed, so you have strong transplants ready the moment the cold passes.

March and April, the spring planting rush

Now the gates open. March is your big warm-season window, so get tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant in the ground along with beans, squash, cucumbers, and melons, and get them in early so they set fruit before the real heat arrives. It is also a fine time to plant fruit trees while the rain and mild temperatures help them root. April is your last solid push for those warm-season crops, so keep planting beans, squash, cucumbers, southern peas, and okra, then mulch everything heavily. The heat is coming, and that mulch is the blanket that carries your soil through it.

May through August, the survival season

Here is where a lot of new growers get discouraged, and I do not want that to be you. Deep summer is not plant-everything season, it is hold-the-line season. The heat, humidity, and daily downpours are brutal on standard vegetables, so you switch teams. Lean into the plants that like it hot, okra, sweet potato slips, southern peas, Seminole pumpkin, and cassava, and let perennial greens like chaya and longevity spinach carry the leafy load. Cook that chaya before it hits your plate, never raw. Use these months to keep something producing and to prep your beds for fall.

September and October, the second spring

If I could circle two months on your calendar, it might be these. As the worst heat breaks in September, your best season starts all over. Get fall tomatoes, peppers, and squash going, usually from transplants, so they mature into cooling weather, and you will often find these fall crops beat anything you grew in spring. October is about as good as gardening gets here, so put in another round of tomatoes and peppers and bring back the whole cool-season family.

November and December, the gentle finish

The year winds down into some of the most pleasant growing you will ever do. November stays mild and easy, so keep planting cool-season greens and roots. December keeps right on giving, with lettuce, spinach, kale, collards, carrots, radishes, and onions all thriving. Just keep one eye on the forecast and cover anything tender on a rare freeze night.

The few rules that hold it all together

If you forget the details, hold onto the shape. Plant warm-season crops in fall and early spring, never the dead of summer. Use winter for greens and cool-season vegetables. Let heat lovers carry you through summer. And plant fruit trees in the cooler, wetter months so they root before the heat tests them.

And here is why a food forest beats a vegetable patch down here. Everything above is the annual, come-and-go crop calendar. Your perennial greens and fruit trees do not follow it, they keep producing across the whole year, so there is always something to walk out and harvest.

When you want a plan built around your yard

A calendar tells you when. A real plan tells you what to plant, where, and how it all works together so you harvest in every season instead of guessing. That is what I lay out, mapped for Florida, in the Florida Food Forest Masterclass.

Take a look at the Florida Food Forest Masterclass. Grow food not lawns.