Zone 11 Planting Calendar

Zone 11 is where the frost date stops being useful. Winter lows sit around 40 to 50F, nothing freezes, and there is no last frost to count backward from, so a Zone 11 planting calendar has to be built on something else. Here that something is heat, plus the wet season that comes with it across most of the zone. The cooler, drier stretch from roughly November through March is when the beds are fullest and cool-season crops actually behave, and the hot, soaking months from May through September belong to okra, southern peas, sweet potato, and the other crops that take that weather in stride. Below is the month-by-month schedule, the crops worth your space in each half of the year, and how to pin the timing down for your own patch of ground.

Zone 11 planting calendar

Here is a month-by-month Zone 11 planting schedule. Since there is no frost to plan around, the calendar follows temperature and season: cool-season crops in the milder, drier winter, and tough heat and humidity lovers through the hot summer. Use it to see what to plant in each month in Zone 11.

Zone 11 planting schedule at a glance

The Zone 11 planting schedule runs on heat rather than frost. The cool, drier months from about November through March carry the main vegetable season, so that is when most of the sowing happens: you start seeds indoors for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from roughly November through February and set the transplants out four to six weeks later, while greens, roots, beans, and cilantro go straight into the ground. Harvests run steadily from midwinter into spring, then the garden narrows to okra, southern peas, sweet potato, and other tropical crops through the hot, wet months of May to September. Late summer is the turn: around August and September you start seeds indoors again for the fall round of brassicas, lettuce, and warm-season transplants, and the cycle begins over.

Month	Start indoors	Transplant / plant out	Direct sow outdoors	Harvest
January	Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant for the dry season	Lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale transplants	Beans, carrots, beets, lettuce, cilantro, radishes	Cool-season greens, tomatoes, peppers, citrus, herbs
February	Basil, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant	Tomato, pepper, eggplant transplants	Beans, cucumbers, squash, corn, sunflowers	Lettuce, root crops, broccoli, early tomatoes
March	Okra, melons, sweet potato slips	Warm-season transplants, herbs	Okra, southern peas, beans, squash, corn, melons	Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, greens, herbs
April		Heat-loving transplants (okra, sweet potato)	Okra, southern peas, sweet potato, yard-long beans	Squash, cucumbers, beans, peppers, herbs
May		Tropical and heat-tolerant crops only	Okra, southern peas, amaranth, malabar spinach	Peppers, eggplant, okra, cucumbers, mangoes
June		Only the toughest tropical crops	Okra, sweet potato vines, yard-long beans, boniato	Okra, peppers, tropical fruit, southern peas
July		Only the toughest tropical crops	Okra, southern peas, sweet potato, calabaza	Okra, peppers, eggplant, tropical greens
August	Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant for fall	Begin hardening off fall transplants	Bush beans, cucumbers, summer squash, calabaza	Okra, peppers, sweet potato greens, tropical fruit
September	Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, 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	Tomatoes, peppers for the dry season	Cool-season transplants (brassicas, greens)	Carrots, beets, radishes, peas, spinach, cilantro	Lettuce, broccoli, beans, herbs, tomatoes
December	Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant	Lettuce, kale, chard, broccoli transplants	Peas, spinach, radishes, carrots, cilantro, beets	Winter greens, root crops, broccoli, citrus, herbs

Deep summer (roughly May through August) is hot and wet, and only the most heat-tolerant tropical crops thrive. Treat it as the season to harvest, mulch heavily, manage drainage, and prep for the fall planting rush.

The best crops for Zone 11

Success in Zone 11 comes from planting each crop in its season. Grow these cool-season crops through the drier winter months:

• Lettuce and salad greens do best November through March. Browse lettuce seeds.
• Kale, broccoli, and cabbage thrive in the mild winter. See kale seeds.
• Carrots, beets, and spinach want the cooler, drier season. Try spinach seeds.

For the hot, humid summer, choose genuinely tropical, heat-loving crops:

• Okra, southern peas, and sweet potato are the backbone of a Zone 11 summer garden. See okra seeds.
• Peppers and eggplant produce for months in the heat. Browse pepper seeds.
• Tomatoes grow best as a cool-season crop here, planted to fruit before peak heat and humidity. See tomato and tomatillo seeds.
• Beans, cucumbers, and summer squash plant in the shoulder seasons for the best results. See bean seeds and cucumber seeds.

Tropical herbs and heat-loving basil round out the summer, while cilantro and dill fill the cool season. Explore the full vegetable seeds and herb seeds collections to plan your Zone 11 garden.

When are the frost dates in Zone 11?

The straight answer is that Zone 11 has no frost dates. It is a frost-free zone, so a killing frost does not normally occur at all. That is why your planting is driven by the wet and dry seasons and by summer heat rather than by the last-spring-frost and first-fall-frost dates that colder-zone gardeners live by.

Because rainfall and heat still vary from place to place within Zone 11, it helps to check local data for your own timing. Enter your ZIP code in our interactive planting calendar for personalized sow and transplant windows tuned to your exact location.

The year-round growing rhythm in Zone 11

With no cold to work around, the thing that limits a Zone 11 garden is heat, and across much of the zone the rainy season that arrives with it. Weeks of high heat and humidity send lettuce to seed within days, keep tomatoes and peppers from setting fruit, and push fungal disease into anything with dense, wet foliage. That inverts the calendar gardeners in colder zones use. The months they write off as dead winter are the months your beds are at their fullest, and the months they treat as peak season are the ones you spend mostly keeping plants alive.

The practical rhythm looks like this. From roughly November through March the air is cooler and drier, and that is your main vegetable season: it is when you start seeds indoors for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, and when you direct sow every cool-season crop you want. From roughly May through September the heat and rain take over and the beds belong to crops that genuinely enjoy that weather. April and October are the hinges between the two. How long each stretch lasts depends on your rainfall pattern and how close you sit to the coast, so treat the months below as a starting point and adjust to what your own season actually does.

Season	Typical months	What to grow
Cool, drier season (main season)	About November through March	Lettuce and salad greens, broccoli, cabbage, kale, carrots, beets, radishes, peas, cilantro, plus tomatoes and peppers timed to fruit before the heat builds
Hot, wet season	About May through September	Okra, southern peas, sweet potato, yard-long beans, peppers, eggplant, and heat-tolerant tropical greens
Transition months	April and October	April: get the heat lovers in the ground before the worst of it. October: fall brassicas, greens, and root crops go in as the rain eases

What does USDA Zone 11 mean?

USDA hardiness zones describe the average coldest winter temperature in an area, not frost dates or summer heat. Zone 11 means the average annual minimum temperature stays between about 40 and 50F. In practice that means almost nothing freezes, and a wide range of tropical and subtropical perennials survive the winter easily. What the zone number does not tell you is when to plant vegetables, so for that you follow the season-driven calendar above and your local rainfall and heat patterns.

Find your exact zone

Not certain you are in Zone 11? Neighboring areas plant on a slightly different rhythm. If your winters are a little cooler and you do see rare light frost, read the Zone 10 planting calendar. If you garden in a hotter, purely tropical pocket, see the Zone 12 planting calendar. And enter your ZIP in the planting calendar tool to confirm your zone and local timing.