What to Plant in December: Vegetable Garden Growing Guide

Learn what to plant in December with Homesteaders of America Vegetable Garden Growing Guides!

No matter where you are gardening in America, be sure to read some of the tips for other growing regions in this guide. Even though your garden may be still churning out produce, you will need to take advantage of the slower season to do some winter garden tasks like soil testing, amending, and next year’s garden planning.

What to Plant in December: Vegetable Garden Growing Guide

How to Use the Growing Guides

In the Growing Guides, you will learn what to plant each month according to when your last frost date. 

• Look up your last frost date by zip code if you don’t know it already.
• Choose the Growing Guide for this month
• Find which month your last frost date is in
• Follow the seed starting suggestions on the graphic

The Growing Guides will be targeted for the continental United States, which also includes some of the warmer areas of our country such as southern extremes Texas and Florida. Their growing season is vastly different from folks living in the northernmost states.

Be sure to follow us on social media, read our newsletter, or check back on the blog for updates throughout the year! 

Last Frost Date in January

Your next round of summer crops is right around the corner but you can spend the next couple months enjoying traditional fall & winter produce from your garden. Here’s what to plant in December:

Last Frost Date in February

Want to know what to plant in December if your last frost was in February? The answer is, “Plenty!”

As some of your main crops begin to to die off, be sure to sow cover crop seeds to support your soil life, maintain topsoil, add fertility, and build organic matter. Winter rye is a good choice for overwintering. It can be tilled under in the spring or you can use a solarization tarp to kill it off. Other choices would be a combination of oats & peas or daikon radishes and turnips if you’d like to break up soil compaction. All of those will be killed off over the winter, leaving your garden ready to plant in the spring.

Last Frost Date in March

If you’d like to keep your garden going you’ll need to be thinking about which solution you’ll need to extend your season. Remember that every layer of protection will effectively bump you one growing zone south. Some gardeners can keep their garden growing almost year-round. Check out Eliot Coleman’s book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, for the best information about how to achieve this.

Last Frost Date in April

Without frost protection, your gardening season is over. Try to get as much clean-up and prep work for the spring done now because you never know if a soggy spring will set you back next year.

This is a great time to take a soil sample and submit it for testing. That way you can be sure to have all of your amendments purchased and ready to spread in the spring before planting. Amending your soil ensures that your plants have all the nutrients they need to grow and produce well. And well-nourished plants mean nutrient dense produce for your family’s table. Grow Abundant is an excellent resource & tool to help you learn how to replenish your soils depleted nutrients.

If you didn’t sow cover crops in your garden you can still protect the soil from runoff (while suppressing weeds) with a mulch of leaves, grass clippings, organic straw or weed-free hay.

If your ground is still workable, you can get garlic seed in the ground. Be sure to cover it with a nice bed of mulch to protect it over the winter.

Now is a great time to learn how to grow windowsill microgreens. It’s quite simple! They grow quickly and in a few short weeks you’ll once again be munching on fresh, crispy, homegrown greens. Try pea shoots, sunflower sprouts, and radishes to start. You can also grow broccoli, kale, beets, and more!

Last Frost Date in May & June

‘Tis the season for winter garden planning! By now a few seed catalogues have already started rolling in and you can focus your efforts solely on drawing up your garden plans and researching new crops. Be sure to check out our Seeding Rate Chart in the Homestead Management Printables so you’re sure to order enough seed. As seed prices continue to rise and the number of seeds in the packets dwindle, you’ll need to pay particular attention to what each seed company is offering per packet. It’s different for everyone and the Seeding Rate Chart will also give you an idea of what a conversion from grams to ounces to M looks like.

As the year draws to a close you’ll want to tally up your garden harvest yields from your Homestead Journal planner. These records will help you quantify your actual production and set goals & grow EVEN MORE NEXT YEAR!