When to Plant — by Crop & Zone
Pick a crop for zone-by-zone planting windows, or use the interactive calendar if you already know your zone. Prefer to browse by time of year? See what to plant, month by month. Not sure of your zone or frost dates? Start with the frost date lookup.
Cool-season vegetables
Peas
One of the first seeds in the ground each spring.
🥬Lettuce
Fast, shade-tolerant, and perfect for succession sowing.
🍃Spinach
The cold-hardiest salad green in the garden.
🥬Kale
Sweetens after frost and stands deep into winter.
🌿Arugula
Salad-ready a month after sowing.
🌈Swiss Chard
The cool-season green that doesn’t quit in summer.
🍃Collard Greens
Southern staple, hardy from Maine to Miami.
🥬Cabbage
Spring and fall heads from one packet of seed.
🥦Broccoli
Cut the main head, keep harvesting side shoots.
🥦Cauliflower
The fussiest brassica — and worth it.
🥬Brussels Sprouts
Planted in spring, perfected by fall frost.
🥬Kohlrabi
Fast, crunchy, and harder to mess up than cabbage.
🥕Carrots
Loose soil and patience — that’s the whole secret.
🫒Beets
Two crops in one: roots below, greens on top.
🌶️Radishes
Seed to salad in under a month.
🥔Turnips
Quick roots plus some of the best cooking greens.
🥕Parsnips
Sow in spring, harvest after the first hard frost.
🧅Onions
Match the variety to your latitude and they’re easy.
🧅Leeks
Slow, unbothered, and standing long after frost.
🧅Scallions
Tuck them into any spare inch of bed.
🧄Garlic
Plant in fall, harvest the next summer.
🥔Potatoes
Plant seed pieces early; hill as they grow.
🥬Celery
Thirsty and slow, but unbeatable homegrown.
🥬Bok Choy
Stir-fry ready in about six weeks.
🌿Mustard Greens
Fast, spicy, and happiest in cool weather.
Warm-season vegetables
Tomatoes
The crop every garden calendar is built around.
🫑Peppers
Slower than tomatoes — start them even earlier.
🍆Eggplant
The most heat-hungry of the big three nightshades.
🍏Tomatillos
Salsa verde needs two plants — they don’t self-pollinate.
🥒Cucumbers
Fast from seed once the soil is warm.
🥒Zucchini
Two plants feed a family. Three feed the neighborhood.
🎃Winter Squash
Butternut and friends — planted early, cured for winter.
🎃Pumpkins
Count backwards from Halloween.
🍉Watermelon
Heat, space, and patience — then August pays off.
🍈Cantaloupe
Slips off the vine when it’s truly ripe.
🌽Sweet Corn
Plant in blocks, not rows — it’s wind-pollinated.
🫘Green Beans (Bush)
The easiest yes in the summer garden.
🫘Pole Beans
One planting, a whole summer of beans.
🌶️Okra
The hotter the summer, the happier the okra.
🍠Sweet Potatoes
Planted from slips into thoroughly warm soil.
Herbs
Basil
Plant with the tomatoes, harvest by pinching.
🌿Cilantro
Bolts in heat — so sow it like a salad green.
🌿Parsley
Slow to sprout, then generous for a year.
🌾Dill
Sow where it will grow — dill hates moving.
🌱Chives
Plant once, snip for a decade.
🌿Thyme
Thrives on neglect and poor, dry soil.
🌿Oregano
A perennial that gets more flavorful with less water.
Flowers
Browse by USDA zone
Every crop guide covers all 13 zones — these jump straight to tomatoes as a starting point:
How the windows are built
Each guide counts planting windows from the typical last spring and first fall frost for the zone — the same arithmetic your seed packets describe, done for you. Zones are a solid default, but frost timing varies inside a zone, so pages link to city-level frost dates wherever precision matters.