Georgia Vegetable Garden Calendar: What to Plant and Do Each Month
Updated
Figures checked against their sources on ; next check .
| Month | What to plant | Other jobs |
|---|---|---|
| January | UGA lists no planting yet. Get beds or seed boxes ready for tomato, pepper, eggplant. | Make a garden plan, take soil samples, apply lime, sulfur and fertilizer by the soil test, and buy seed for more than one planting. |
| February | Early plantings of carrots, collards, lettuce, mustard, English peas, Irish potatoes, radishes, spinach, turnips. Sow seed boxes: tomatoes take 6 weeks to reach transplant size, peppers and eggplants 8 weeks. Seed herbs for April planting. | Prepare raised ridges for winter and early spring plantings. If nematodes were a problem last year, plan a less susceptible crop for that spot. |
| March | Second plantings of quick crops: turnips, mustard, radishes, spring onions. Get rows ready for warm-season vegetables, which go in during the last week of March or the first week or two of April as weather permits. A few tender crops can be risked if they are kept covered in bad weather. | Thin plants when they are 2 to 3 inches tall. Harden off transplants in a sheltered place outdoors a few days before planting. Mulch between rows. |
| April | Frost-tender crops: beans (snap, pole, and lima), cantaloupe, sweet corn, cucumbers, eggplant, okra, field peas, peppers, squash, tomatoes, watermelon. Plant tender herbs. Plant snap beans, corn and squash again within 2 to 3 weeks of the first planting, and lima beans and corn again within 3 to 4 weeks. | Put tall crops such as okra, pole beans and corn on the north side of the other vegetables so they do not shade them, and plant corn in at least two rows for pollination. Do not work in the garden when the foliage is wet. |
| May | Third plantings of snap beans, corn, squash, lima beans. | Stake or trellis a few tomato plants and start removing suckers. Mulch tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, Irish potatoes, okra and lima beans before dry spells, once the plants are established. Keep a log of problems and what worked. |
| June | Sweet potatoes, and a second planting of Southern peas. | Harvest beans, peas, squash, cucumbers and okra regularly. Dig onions and Irish potatoes when two thirds of the tops have died down. Clear rows of finished crops and replant them or leave them fallow for fall. |
| July | Plant these no later than July 20: tomatoes, okra, corn, pole beans, lima beans. Cucumbers, squash and snap beans can go in too, and so can a pumpkin for Halloween. | Start planning the fall garden. Keep grass from going to seed and leave cleared soil fallow. Clean off harvested rows right away. Water deeply and less often, only as needed to prevent drought stress. |
| August | Cutoffs: snap beans and Irish potatoes by August 15, cucumbers and squash by August 31. Start plants of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, onions. Start them in a half-shaded area for setting out in September. | Prepare soil for the September and October plantings of cool-season crops. If the soil is dry, open the furrow, pour in water, plant the seed and cover it. |
| September to October | Plant or transplant in mild weather: beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, collards, lettuce, mustard, onions, radishes, spinach, turnips. Make a second planting of collards, turnips, cabbage, mustard and kale. | Refresh the mulch and start adding leaves to the compost pile. Water deeply, especially new transplants. Pick mature green peppers and tomatoes before frost, and harvest and dry herbs. |
| November to December | UGA lists no planting for these months. | Spread manure, rotted sawdust and leaves and work them in. Take a soil sample early, since lime applied now helps next year. Take stock of what worked, and order seed in December or January. |
In short: Plant in two main seasons, spring and fall, and use the month's row for jobs. For a fall crop, count back from your first killing frost by the days to maturity plus a harvest allowance.
What you can do with this calendar
Use it to see what belongs in a Georgia vegetable garden this month and what else is due. The University of Georgia Extension publishes the full text as Circular 943, written by Bob Westerfield and most recently reviewed in full in March. This page condenses its month-by-month list into a table and paraphrases the jobs. The circular itself, which your county Extension office also has, is the place for detail.
UGA says you can plant or harvest something almost all year, and that two planting periods matter most: spring, March to May, and fall, mid-July to September. Spring plantings are harvested in June and July, and fall plantings from October to December. The table has 10 rows because the circular combines September with October and November with December.
Which Georgia the dates fit
The dates are for the typical day and month in middle Georgia, which UGA describes as a belt across the state from Columbus through Macon to Augusta. Move them for the rest of the state. In extreme south Georgia, spring planting can be as much as 2 to 3 weeks earlier and fall planting as much as 2 weeks later. In north Georgia, spring planting runs 1 to 3 weeks later as you go north through the mountain counties, and fall planting is about 2 weeks earlier.
The circular bases all of this on long-term average dates of the last killing frost in spring and the first in fall, and adds that no year follows the average, so use your own judgment about advancing or delaying a job when the weather says to.
The fall count-back rule
Fall planting is where timing goes wrong, because a crop that goes in too late meets frost before it finishes. UGA's rule is to find your frost date and count back the days to maturity plus 18 days for harvest. The harvest allowance is there because a crop is not picked in a day. It needs time in the garden after it matures.
Apply it to a crop of your own by taking the maturity figure from the seed packet and adding the allowance. Subtract that total from the first killing frost date. The result is the last day to plant.
Worked example: snap beans in three parts of Georgia
UGA works one example in the circular: snap beans that mature in 55 days, a frost date of November 15, and a plant-by date of September 3. That is 73 days back from the frost date, the maturity time plus the harvest allowance.
Here is what that becomes across the state. A middle Georgia gardener uses September 3. Fall planting dates are about 14 days earlier in the north, so a north Georgia gardener with the same beans aims for about August 20. In far south Georgia, fall dates can run up to 14 days later, which gives about September 17. Those are shifts of the middle-state date, and they are only as good as the frost dates behind them. If you know your own frost date, the rule gives a better answer than a shift.
One more point from the circular. Its August list says snap beans should go in no later than August 15, while the worked example above lands on September 3. The circular does not reconcile the two. The example depends on a bean that matures in 55 days and a frost on November 15, so if either assumption is off for your variety or your county, plan toward the earlier date.
Other cutoffs in the table
The July row lists crops that must go in no later than July 20 to mature before frost, and the August row gives August 15 for snap beans and Irish potatoes and August 31 for cucumbers and squash. The February row sets the seed-box timing: peppers and eggplants take 8 weeks from seed to transplant size, and tomatoes take 6 weeks.
Using the table
Read across a row for the month. The middle column says what to plant, and the last column holds everything else due. The circular is a reminder and a guide rather than a schedule to follow to the letter. Check the weather as well as the date, since a cold spell after planting can set seed back even when the date is right. For how long a crop then needs in the ground, see the days to harvest chart, and for starting the transplants indoors, the seed starting schedule compares UGA's weeks with two other universities.