If you don’t know what zone your garden is in, find your USDA hardiness zone here. Enter the code on the security pop-up (it is case-sensitive), then enter your ZIP Code to see your zone. If you click where you live, a window will pop up showing your exact zone info.
What to Do In Your Garden This Month
Zones 1 – 4
- Towards the end of the month, start tomatoes, peppers and eggplant indoors under lights and use bottom heat to speed the germination and early growth.
- Start onions from seed, cauliflower, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts indoors under lights. When seedlings have their second pair of true leaves, transplant them to larger pots.
- For transplanting flowers, start zinnias, salvia, petunias, and nicotiana indoors under lights.
- Transplant any pot-bound houseplants.
- Hold back on removing mulch from perennials: The sun will warm the soil and stimulate new growth, which the hard freezes still to come could damage.
Zones 5 – 6
- Towards the end of the month, start tomatoes, peppers and eggplant indoors under lights and use bottom heat to speed the germination and early growth.
- Transplant early season tomatoes started last month into larger pots.
- Start broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, and lettuce indoors under lights and on heat mats for an early greens crop. You will transplant these early next month.
- Start annual flowers, such as marigolds and zinnias, indoors under lights.
- As soon the garden soil is workable, start planting potatoes, peas, lettuce, radishes, and carrots. Also, transplant onion and leek seedlings started last month. Onion transplants should go in about two inches deep, for leek seedlings use a garden dibber to poke a hole about six inches deep and plant the leek up to its leaves for a longer blanched section.
- Late in the month sow seeds of nasturtiums .
Zones 7 – 8
- Start broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale under lights and heat indoors for transplanting early next month.
- In the middle of the month, plant a row of Swiss chard. Tender stalks will be ready to harvest in mid-May—and the plants will keep producing all summer.
- Also in midmonth, sow other hardy vegetables, such as carrots, beets, kohlrabi, radishes, spinach, mustard, leaf lettuces, and turnips.
- Add new flowers to your garden this season, such as bee balm, cosmos, marigold, sunflower, and zinnia.
Zones 9 – 10
- Succession plant another round of cool-loving vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, spinach, radishes, lettuce, and parsley. It may be too late to plant peas, however, if temperatures usually turn hot in your area by April or May.
- Harden-off tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants by moving them outside, beneath a plastic cover or inside a cold frame during the day for a few days. Plant them in the garden after the last possible frost.
- Once frost danger has passed, plant okra, sweet potatoes, beans, squash, corn, cucumbers, and melons.
- Plant flowers that will tolerate heat: petunias, zinnias, and Roselle.
- Keep a look out for insects. Control early aphids with a soapy spray on leaves and you’ll see fewer as the season progresses.