Zone 10 Planting Calendar

Zone 10 asks a different question than the rest of the country. Cold is not what ends your season here, heat is. Winter lows sit around 30 to 40F and a killing frost is rare, so the ground never really shuts down, and it is the June to August heat that finishes off lettuce, broccoli, and spinach. That inverts the whole year: fall and winter become the main vegetable season, spring and fall are the two windows for tomatoes, and midsummer belongs to okra, southern peas, and other crops that shrug off heat and humidity. The Zone 10 planting calendar below goes month by month through what to sow, what to transplant, and what you will be picking, along with the crops worth your bed space and how to pin down your own local dates.

Zone 10 planting calendar

Here is a month-by-month Zone 10 planting schedule. Because the zone is essentially frost free, the calendar is organized around temperature: cool-season crops in the mild winter half of the year, and heat-tolerant crops through the hot summer. Use it to see what to plant in each month in Zone 10.

Zone 10 planting schedule at a glance

The Zone 10 planting schedule runs backwards from what most gardening books describe, because the season is bounded by heat rather than by frost. You start seeds indoors for tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in the middle of winter, roughly December through February, and set those transplants out from late February into March so they fruit before the heat lands. From April through August the beds belong to okra, southern peas, sweet potato and other heat crops, and sowing cool-season things in that stretch is wasted seed. Fall is the real reset: September and October are when you sow carrots, beets, lettuce and peas and set out the brassicas, and the main vegetable harvest runs from there through the mild winter and into spring.

Month	Start indoors	Transplant / plant out	Direct sow outdoors	Harvest
January	Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant for spring	Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, kale starts	Carrots, beets, radishes, peas, spinach, cilantro	Winter lettuce, kale, broccoli, citrus, herbs
February	Basil, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant	Tomato, pepper, and eggplant transplants late in the month	Beans, carrots, beets, chard, lettuce, dill	Cool-season greens, root crops, peas, broccoli
March	Okra, melons, sweet potato slips	Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, herbs	Beans, cucumbers, squash, corn, sunflowers	Lettuce, peas, carrots, early tomatoes forming
April	Fall tomato and pepper starts later	Sweet potato slips, warm-season transplants	Okra, southern peas, melons, squash, sweet corn	Broccoli, cabbage, early cucumbers, herbs
May		Heat-loving transplants (okra, sweet potato)	Okra, southern peas, sweet potato, malabar spinach	Early tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans
June		Tropical and heat-tolerant crops only	Okra, southern peas, yard-long beans, amaranth	Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, herbs
July		Heat-tolerant transplants only	Okra, sweet potato vines, southern peas, sunflowers	Peppers, okra, eggplant, southern peas, herbs
August	Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant for fall	Start hardening off fall transplants	Bush beans, cucumbers, summer squash for fall	Okra, peppers, eggplant, sweet potato greens
September	Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce	Tomato, pepper, eggplant transplants for fall	Beans, carrots, beets, chard, lettuce, cilantro	Late okra, southern peas, peppers, herbs
October	Onions, leeks, more cool-season starts	Broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce, chard transplants	Carrots, beets, radishes, peas, spinach, lettuce	Fall tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers
November		Cool-season transplants (brassicas, greens)	Carrots, beets, radishes, peas, spinach, cilantro	Lettuce, broccoli, beans, herbs, fall tomatoes
December	Tomatoes, peppers for the next spring	Lettuce, kale, chard, broccoli transplants	Peas, spinach, radishes, carrots, cilantro	Winter greens, root crops, broccoli, citrus

The quiet months for sowing are the peak of summer (June through August), when only genuinely heat-loving crops thrive. That is your window to harvest, mulch, and plan the fall garden.

The best crops for Zone 10

The trick in Zone 10 is matching each crop to the right season. Grow these cool-season crops from fall through early spring:

• Lettuce and salad greens stay sweet in the mild winter. Browse lettuce seeds.
• Kale, broccoli, and cabbage shine October through February. See kale seeds.
• Carrots, beets, and spinach love the cool season. Try spinach seeds.

For the hot summer, lean on heat-tolerant crops:

• Okra, southern peas, and sweet potato thrive in heat and humidity.
• Peppers and eggplant keep producing through summer once established. Browse pepper seeds.
• Tomatoes do best as a spring and fall crop, planted to fruit before or after peak heat. See tomato and tomatillo seeds.
• Cucumbers and squash plant in spring and again for fall. See cucumber seeds and squash seeds.

Herbs like basil, cilantro, and dill round out the year (cilantro for winter, basil for summer). Explore the full vegetable seeds and herb seeds collections to build your Zone 10 garden.

When are the frost dates in Zone 10?

Here is the honest answer: Zone 10 is essentially frost free. Most winters pass with no killing frost at all, and when frost does appear it is usually a light, brief event in the coldest weeks of the year. That means the classic last-spring-frost and first-fall-frost dates that drive planting in colder zones barely apply to you. Your calendar is set by heat, not cold.

Because microclimates and elevation shift things street by street, the best way to know your own risk is to check local data. Enter your ZIP code in our interactive planting calendar for your exact local frost dates (if any) and personalized sow and transplant windows.

Zone 10a vs 10b: frost, or the lack of it

The two halves of Zone 10 sit about 5F apart, and at this end of the map that gap decides whether frost is part of your gardening life at all. Zone 10a is the cooler half: in most winters it catches a light frost, usually somewhere between late December and early February, enough to burn basil and tender tropicals but not enough to end a bed of kale. Zone 10b is the milder half and is essentially frost free, so tender perennials stay outside all winter and there is no cutoff date to plan around.

Which is why the frost columns below are close to useless as planning dates, and the growing season column carries the real information. Elevation, distance from the coast and how much heat a neighborhood holds overnight can shift a light frost by weeks or remove it altogether, so read the table as a description of the pattern rather than as dates to plant by. If you garden in 10a, keep a sheet of row cover on hand for the odd cold night in January. In 10b you can plan on the calendar simply not stopping.

Subzone	Average last spring frost	Average first fall frost	Growing season
Zone 10a	A light frost is possible in most winters, usually between late December and early February	Unreliable; frost is the exception, not the rule	About 320 to 345 days
Zone 10b	Essentially frost free in most years	Essentially frost free in most years	Effectively year round

With no last frost to count back from, the usual rule of thumb needs rewording here. Rather than timing to a frost date, you start seeds indoors so that transplants go out roughly 8 to 10 weeks before daytime highs settle into the nineties, which across most of Zone 10 means starting tomatoes and peppers in December or January and planting them out in late February or March.

What does USDA Zone 10 mean?

USDA hardiness zones are based on the average coldest winter temperature in an area, not on frost dates or summer heat. Zone 10 means the average annual minimum temperature sits between about 30 and 40F. That tells you which perennials and shrubs can survive your winter (a lot of them, including many tropicals and subtropicals), but it does not directly tell you when to plant your vegetables. For that, you follow the temperature-driven calendar above and your local frost data.

Find your exact zone

Not sure Zone 10 is really you? Bordering areas grow on a slightly different schedule. If your winters are a touch cooler, read the Zone 9 planting calendar. If you are in a true tropical pocket, see the Zone 11 planting calendar. And enter your ZIP in the planting calendar tool to confirm your zone and local dates.