Vegetable Planting Calendar USA
On this page
- October
- Step one: find your band
- Step two: read your year
- Month-by-month detail
- Find your own frost dates
- Read soil temperature, not the calendar
- Starting seed indoors
- Is it too late to plant?
- What season extension actually buys you
- A calendar tells you what is possible. It doesn’t tel...
- Go deeper: crop guides and planning tools
- References
- Frequently Asked Questions
What can you plant now, where you garden? This USA vegetable planting calendar is organised by climate band rather than by one national date, because the country runs from under 100 frost-free days to year-round growing. Find your band from your own frost dates, then read your whole sowing, planting and harvest year from it — USDA zones 3 to 10.
This month in the garden · United States
October
Garlic month across most of the country, and the month beds get cleared and covered. Bare soil over winter is soil you lose.
Timings below are written for the middle of the country, roughly USDA zones 5 to 7. Colder and warmer zones are called out where the difference changes the answer — read your own frost dates first.
Sow now
- Cover crops
- Overwintering spinach (cover)
- Cold-frame salads
- Fava beans (zones 7+)
Plant now
- Garlic
- Shallots
- Bare-root fruit trees
- Spring bulbs
Harvest now
- Pumpkins & winter squash
- Carrots & beets
- Kale
- Late brassicas
Step one: find your band
| Band | Where | Last spring frost | First fall frost | Frost-free days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Cold band USDA zones 3-5 |
Intermountain West, Northern Plains & Upper Midwest, Lower Midwest & Ohio Valley, Northeast & New England | mid-May to early June | mid-September to mid-October | 90-150 frost-free days |
|
Mild band USDA zones 6-7 |
Pacific Northwest, Mid-Atlantic & Upper South | late March to late April | late October to mid-November | 180-220 frost-free days |
|
Hot band USDA zones 8-10 |
California & Mediterranean coast, Southwest deserts, Deep South & Gulf Coast | February to mid-March (frost-free in the far south) | late November to December, or none | 250-365 frost-free days |
Step two: read your year
| Month | Cold band | Mild band | Hot band |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | Nothing outdoors — ground is frozen or saturated. | Peas, spinach and broad beans in the mildest spots, under cloches. | Peas, carrots, radishes, lettuce, spinach and potatoes (south Texas and Florida). |
| February | Nothing outdoors. | Peas, spinach, radish and fava beans as soil becomes workable. | Beans, corn, squash and cucumbers in the low desert; carrots, beets and greens everywhere in the band. |
| March | Peas, spinach and radish very late month where soil is workable. | Carrots, radish, beets, lettuce, spinach, peas, turnips. | Beans, corn, squash, cucumbers and melons; last lettuce and spinach before heat. |
| April | Peas, spinach, radish, carrots, lettuce, onions, potatoes. | Beans late month, carrots, beets, chard, succession lettuce. | Heat-tolerant beans, southern peas, okra, melons, sweet corn. |
| May | Beans, corn, squash and cucumbers late month once soil hits 60-70°F. | Cucurbits, beans, corn; succession lettuce and beets. | Okra, southern peas, melons, sweet potatoes, heat-tolerant beans. |
| June | Cucurbits once soil is 70°F+; succession beans, carrots, lettuce. | Succession beans and corn; heat-tolerant lettuce in shade. | Okra, southern peas, melons only. |
| July | Succession beans, carrots, beets and fall greens. | Fall carrots and beets; succession beans. | Little to nothing — maintain irrigation. |
| August | Fall spinach, lettuce, radish, turnips and fast greens. | Fall carrots, beets, spinach, lettuce, radish, turnips. | Fall greens late month; beans and squash for a fall crop. |
| September | Fast greens, spinach and radish under cover only. | Spinach, lettuce, radish, turnips, overwintering greens. | Fall greens, carrots, beets, peas, brassicas — the main sowing month. |
| October | Cover crops; garlic. | Spinach, lettuce and hardy greens under cover; cover crops; garlic. | Peas, greens, carrots, beets, brassicas — peak fall sowing continues. |
| November | Nothing. | Broad beans and hardy peas in the mildest spots. | Root crops, greens, peas, brassicas. |
| December | Nothing. | Nothing outdoors. | Peas, greens, root crops. |
Month-by-month detail
- What to plant in January USA — In January most of the USA is planning rather than planting.
- What to plant in February USA — February is the main indoor seed-starting month across most of the USA.
- What to plant in March USA — March is peak indoor sowing in the cold band, the start of outdoor sowing in the mild band, and the last cool-season window before heat arrives in the hot band.
- What to plant in April USA — April is the main transplanting month in the mild band and the main direct sowing month in the cold band.
- What to plant in May USA — May is the main planting-out month across most of the USA.
- What to plant in June USA — June is peak growth in the cold and mild bands and the start of the summer gap in the hot band.
- What to plant in July USA — July is a maintenance month in most of the USA and a planting gap in the hot band.
- What to plant in August USA — August is the fall-planting month.
- What to plant in September USA — September is the handover month.
- What to plant in October USA — October is garlic-planting month and cleanup month across most of the USA, and peak fall planting in the hot band.
- What to plant in November USA — November is cleanup and protection in the cold and mild bands, and continued planting in the hot band.
- What to plant in December USA — December is a planning month across most of the USA.
Find your own frost dates
Every date on this page is relative to two numbers that belong to your garden, not to your state: your average last spring frost and your average first fall frost. Everything else is arithmetic from those two.
Find them by ZIP code through your county Cooperative Extension office, or from NOAA's freeze/frost climatology. Your USDA hardiness zone is a useful shorthand for looking them up, but it is not a substitute for them: hardiness zones describe average winter minimum temperature, which tells you what survives your winter, not how long your growing season is. Two gardens in the same zone can have growing seasons that differ by six weeks.
Then adjust for your own site. Cold air pools in hollows and drains off slopes, so a low-lying garden can run two weeks behind a hillside one a mile away. Large bodies of water delay both frosts. A south-facing wall creates a pocket that behaves like somewhere half a zone warmer. One season of your own records beats any published average.
Read soil temperature, not the calendar
Air temperature is what you feel; soil temperature is what the seed responds to. In spring, soil lags air by weeks — which is why a warm week in March tempts people into sowing, and why that sowing rots.
Measure at seed depth: push a soil thermometer 5–10 cm (2–4 in) into the bed and read it in the early morning, when soil is coldest. Afternoon readings flatter the surface and mislead. Take readings on three consecutive days before deciding — a single warm morning is weather, not a trend.
| Crop group | Minimum | Ideal range | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peas, spinach, lettuce | 40°F (4°C) | 45–70°F | Slow but safe at the minimum; germination speeds sharply above 50°F. |
| Carrots, beets, radish, turnip | 45°F (7°C) | 45–85°F | Carrot seed is slow to start — 10–21 days at the low end of this range. |
| Beans, sweet corn | 60°F (16°C) | 70–85°F | Below 60°F seed rots rather than germinating. The most common May failure. |
| Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant | 60°F (16°C) | 70–85°F | Transplanted, not sown outdoors. Nights must also hold above 50°F. |
| Squash, cucumbers, melons | 70°F (21°C) | 70–95°F | The warmest requirement of any common vegetable. Do not rush these. |
Starting seed indoors
| Crop group | Start indoors | Move outdoors | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onions, leeks, shallots | 10–12 weeks before last frost | 2–4 weeks before last frost | Slow from seed and tolerant of a long indoor period. |
| Peppers and eggplant | 8–10 weeks before | 2 weeks after last frost | Need nights above 55°F before they go out, whatever the frost date says. |
| Tomatoes | 6–8 weeks before | 1–2 weeks after last frost | Sown earlier than this they become root-bound and stall after transplanting. |
| Brassicas | 4–6 weeks before | 2–4 weeks before last frost | Tolerate frost; can go out ahead of the frost date. |
| Cucurbits | 3–4 weeks before | After last frost, soil 70°F | Resent root disturbance — sow in modules and move them on quickly. |
Is it too late to plant?
The question that matters in late summer is not what you would like to grow but what can still finish. Take the crop's days to maturity, add two to three weeks — growth slows as days shorten, and catalogue figures assume midsummer light — then count forward from today. If that lands after your average first fall frost, the crop will not finish.
When the arithmetic fails, the fix is a faster crop rather than a later date: radish (25–30 days), salad leaves (30–40), spinach (40–50), bush beans (55–60) all fit windows that a 90-day tomato does not.
Frost tolerance buys extra time at the end. Kale, leeks, parsnips and Brussels sprouts are not merely frost-tolerant but improve after frost, as starches convert to sugars. Counting those crops' seasons as ending at first frost understates them by weeks.
What season extension actually buys you
| Method | Typical gain | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Floating row cover | 2–4 weeks at each end | Adds roughly 2–4°F of frost protection and excludes early pests at the same time. The cheapest intervention with the largest effect. |
| Black plastic mulch | 1–2 weeks earlier planting | Raises soil temperature several degrees. Most useful in the cold band for cucurbits and corn, which are limited by soil warmth rather than air. |
| Low tunnels | 4–6 weeks at each end | Row cover over hoops. Enough to carry hardy greens through a cold-band winter in most of zones 6–7. |
| Cold frame | 6–8 weeks at each end | Effectively shifts the bed one hardiness zone warmer. Needs venting on sunny days or it cooks. |
| Choosing a faster cultivar | Free | The most overlooked option. A cultivar that matures two weeks earlier removes the risk entirely at no cost and no effort. |
What this page can’t do for you
A calendar tells you what is possible. It doesn’t tell you what you decided.
Everything above is timing, and timing is only the first of the decisions. What this page cannot hold is your garden: which bed each crop is going into this year, which family was there last year, when you actually sowed rather than when you meant to, what germinated, and what you want to change next season. Those are the things people try to keep in their heads across nine months, and they are the reason a well-informed gardener still ends up with an empty bed in July and forty lettuces in one week.
The USA Vegetable Garden Planner is the paper system for that — nine regional climate profiles, a frost-relative calendar worked from your own two frost dates, bed and container layouts, a four-year rotation planner, a seed inventory, a sowing log and a harvest tracker. Print it once, use it all season, print it fresh next January.
Go deeper: crop guides and planning tools
Popular crop guides: Asparagus · Beets · Corn · Cucumbers · Garlic · Green Onions (Regrowing & From-Seed Guide) · Herbs · Kale · Lettuce · Parsnips · Potatoes · Radishes · Squash · Zucchini. Every other crop is in the USA growing guides and the USA site directory.
To turn the calendar into a plan, sketch your beds in the free Garden Layout Planner, then follow the season with the USA Vegetable Garden Planner (printable PDF, 74 pages).
New: How the USA Planner Works -- zones, states and what's in the printable PDF.
References
-
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map
Zone definitions based on average annual extreme minimum winter temperature — the basis for looking up local frost dates, and the reason zones alone do not describe season length.
-
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information — Freeze/Frost Data
Climatological probabilities for first and last freeze dates by station, the underlying source for local frost-date lookups.
-
University of Missouri IPM — Understanding Tomato Fruit Set
Optimum pollination range 70–85°F; each flower must be pollinated within roughly 50 hours.
-
Rutgers Plant & Pest Advisory — High Temperatures and Tomato Fruit Set
Pollen viability falls above 85°F day / 70°F night, defining the midsummer fruit-set gap in the hot band.
-
Penn State Extension — Tomato Production
Soil pH 5.8–6.6; growth and pollination slow above 90°F or below 55°F.
-
University of Maine Cooperative Extension Bulletin #4135 — Storage Conditions: Fruits and Vegetables
Post-harvest temperature and humidity ranges underlying the storage guidance in the crop guides this calendar links to.
-
UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center — Produce Facts
Chilling-sensitivity thresholds for warm-season crops held below 10°C (50°F).
Turn this calendar into a written plan. The USA Vegetable Garden Planner (printable PDF) has frost-date planning pages, bed layouts, crop rotation, a sowing log and a harvest tracker — 74 printable pages.
Keep reading
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find my last frost date?
Look up your USDA hardiness zone for your ZIP code, then check your county extension service for local average last spring and first fall frost dates. Local elevation and water bodies shift these by weeks.
Can I use my USDA zone as a planting calendar?
No. Zones measure average winter minimum temperature, not season length. Two places in the same zone can have growing seasons that differ by months. Use the zone to find your frost dates, then plan from those.
What soil temperature do I need before sowing?
About 40°F for peas and spinach, 45°F for carrots and beets, 60°F for beans and tomatoes, and 70°F for squash, cucumbers and melons. Below those figures seed rots rather than germinating.
When should I start seeds indoors?
Onions and leeks 10-12 weeks before your last frost, peppers 8-10 weeks, tomatoes 6-8 weeks, brassicas 4-6 weeks and cucurbits 3-4 weeks.
Last updated 25 August 2026
Helpful Next Steps
Use these practical links to turn the guide into a clear garden plan and the right next action.
Keep going
Plan the next step
Use the printable SoilCommander planner for your region to turn this guide into sowing dates, bed layouts and weekly garden tasks.