When's the Best Time to Start a Vegetable Garden (Potager) in Central Florida?

Answer: My answer is the 3rd week of October

I think once we start dropping out of 90 degree weather, the bulk of common American vegetables begin to thrive. As a Central Floridian gardener this is the main thing you want to balance: what weather is too hot for my month old plants and which could freeze my plants. I say month old because I think younger plants can handle the heat a little better. The more accurate you are in your estimation here, the more time you'll have to grow and the more fruiting time you will get. This past Fall, I planted my garden on like 11/26/2024. We didn't get a freeze in Orlando this year so I didn't need to worry about losing or covering plants. I had great growing weather to look forward to until June 1st. If I wanted to optimize growing time I should've planted the third week of October.

Vegetable Problems in Temperature Extremes

Too Hot	Too Cold
bacteria rot in stem	partial or complete death
premature bolting
increased bug attacks
spindly plants

Let me expand more on fruiting time or harvesting time. Your soonest harvests (likely lettuce if you plant it) will be ready to harvest at around 9 weeks. Your latest 1st harvest will come around 120 days: slicer tomatoes, brussels sprouts (yes its 'brussels'), pumpkins). Some vegetables like carrots are one and done, maybe day 90 you rip them out and that's it. Other plants like cucumbers take a couple months before they start producing then have a multiple-month harvesting period. For example, cucumbers start fruiting just before 3 months and are good until month 6-8 and tomatoes start at around 4 months and can be good until month 8-12. I really like the second to last week of February as the time to plant a garden because this is when I've noticed natural foliage begins to wake up, but that leaves about 4 1/2 months, maybe 5 before it gets too hot.

Hot Take: Growing in the Summer

An old Chinese fable goes like this: "The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the next best time is now.

So what if you want to grow a garden in the summer? It's doable, here's what I'd say. This is my 65%/35% rule. When gardening it's good to make 65% of what you set out to do reliable and the other 35% experimental. So for growing a summer garden, your 65 plants would be luffa, sweet potato, seminole pumpkin, everglades tomato, cow pea, some beans, tropical spinaches, moringa, okra, zucchini, chinese python bean, cucumber... and the other 35%, go ahead and experiment with. Just FYI, brassicas are susceptible to bacteria rot in the summer.

My Last Consideration

When I worked as an aquaponics greenhouse manager, I used to be opposed to summer vegetable growing. Just following the natural ecology of Florida, I said, for the most part, vegetables can't take the heat from the like the last two weeks of May until around the end of August, so now is the time invest in grass. Grass naturally grows exponentially better once summer rolls around. Livestock eats grass and so I think there's natural potential to capitalize on a livestock venture in the summer.

And don't forget about fruit trees. The summer is a great time to plant fruit trees because this is when you'll see the most growth out of them, and you need to do it anyway. So why not when vegetables are on a break season? Plant some tropical fruit trees, some fast growers! If you plant bananas and papayas in the early part of the temperature increase (April-June), you could have a fruiting tree in less than a year.

In summary, I hope this blog post improves your planting dates for your Orlando garden. Send me a picture of your garden if you want, I'd be interested!

Best and Blessings!