November splits the country cleanly in two. North of about zone 7, the growing year is over and the only things that go in the ground are the ones that want winter: garlic, the last spring bulbs, and seed you sow deliberately so it will not come up until March. South of that line, November is the opening of the cool season, and in zones 9 and 10 it is one of the best planting months of the year.
The dividing line is not really a zone, it is your first frost date. Everything below is counted from it, forward for crops that overwinter and backward for crops that have to finish before the cold. Once you know your date the list for November is short and specific.
Find your first frost date
The zone averages below will be a week or two off for any particular garden, so start with your own ZIP.
Enter your US ZIP code for your USDA zone, frost dates & planting calendar.
What to plant in November, by zone
| Zone | First frost | Garlic window | Still sow from seed | Set out as transplants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 to 4 | Sep 15 to Sep 28 | Closed | Dormant seeding only, once the soil is cold | Nothing |
| 5a | Oct 3 | Closed Oct 31 | Dormant seeding only | Nothing |
| 5b | Oct 8 | Through Nov 5 | Dormant seeding only | Nothing |
| 6a | Oct 13 | Through Nov 10 | Dormant seeding; salad greens in a cold frame already sown | Nothing |
| 6b | Oct 18 | Through Nov 15 | Dormant seeding | Nothing |
| 7a | Oct 25 | Through Nov 22 | Nothing for a harvest this year | Nothing |
| 7b | Nov 1 | Nov 1 to Nov 29 | Nothing for a harvest this year | Kale and collards, first week only |
| 8a | Nov 8 | Nov 8 to Dec 6 | Radishes in a cold frame through about Nov 1 | Kale, cabbage, collards |
| 8b | Nov 15 | Nov 15 to Dec 13 | Radishes in a cold frame through about Nov 8 | Kale, cabbage, collards, lettuce |
| 9a | Nov 30 | From Nov 30 | Radishes to Nov 9, spinach to Nov 2, onion sets to Nov 9 | Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, kale |
| 9b | Dec 10 | From Dec 10 | Radishes to Nov 19, spinach to Nov 12, onion sets to Nov 19 | Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, kale |
| 10a | Dec 20 | From Dec 20 | Radishes and onion sets Nov 8 to 29, spinach Nov 8 to 22, kale to Nov 4 | Almost every cool-season crop |
| 10b | Dec 31 | From Dec 31 | Lettuce to Nov 11, kale to Nov 15, beets to Nov 13, cilantro to Nov 16 | Almost every cool-season crop |
| 11 and up | none | Pre-chilled cloves only | The full cool-season list, plus tomatoes and peppers for a winter crop | Everything |
Every date comes from the same engine as the fall planting calendar by zone: days to maturity plus about two weeks for short-day growth, minus the days a hardy crop keeps going past a light frost. Garlic windows run from the first frost through the following four weeks, as explained in the garlic guide.
Zones 3 and 4: mulch, dormant seed, and wait
Your first frost was in September and the ground will be frozen for most of the month. Nothing you sow now grows before spring, and the garlic window closed in mid to late October.
The November job for garlic here is mulch, and timing matters more than people think. Put four to six inches of straw or shredded leaves over the garlic bed after the top inch or two of soil has frozen, not before. Mulch laid on warm soil keeps it warm, which invites the cloves to push green growth that the first real cold then kills. Mulch laid on frozen soil keeps it frozen, which is the point: it stops the freeze and thaw cycle that heaves cloves out of the ground.
The other thing worth doing is dormant seeding. Once the soil has gone cold and is staying cold, scatter spinach, lettuce or kale seed on a prepared bed and rake it in lightly. It will sit there until the soil warms in spring and come up on its own schedule, often ahead of anything you could sow by hand in April. It costs a packet of seed. Sow it on a warm week in early November and you get a flush of seedlings that die in December, so wait until the forecast has settled cold.
Zones 5 and 6: the end of garlic season
November is the last garlic call. The window runs through about November 5 in zone 5b, November 10 in zone 6a and November 15 in zone 6b. If you missed it in zone 5a, plant anyway as long as you can still work the soil. A clove that goes in late roots less before winter and usually makes a smaller head, but it rarely fails outright.
Spring bulbs are the same story: they go in until the ground freezes, and a late planting beats a bag of bulbs rotting in the garage.
If you sowed salad greens in a cold frame in September, November is when they earn it. Growth slows to a crawl once days drop under about ten hours, which happens in early November at the latitude of Chicago and a little later further south, so what you harvest from here to February is mostly what grew before that. The cold frame guide has the sow-by dates for next year if you did not.
Carrots, parsnips and leeks already in the ground can stay there. Cover them with a foot of loose straw or leaves before the ground freezes and you can dig them through much of winter. Cold converts some of the starch in carrots to sugar, which is why a December carrot tastes better than an August one.
Zone 7: garlic month
This is the zone where November and garlic line up exactly. The window is October 25 to November 22 in zone 7a and November 1 to November 29 in zone 7b. Shallots go in on the same schedule. Philadelphia and New York sit in zone 7b, with first frosts around November 10 and November 20, so the real window there runs into early December.
Seed sowing for a harvest this year is done. The last radish date was October 4 in zone 7a and October 11 in zone 7b, and even a cold frame, which buys about two weeks, only stretched that to the middle or end of October. What you can still do in the first week of the month in zone 7b is set out kale and collard transplants, which are hardy enough to establish before the cold sets in and will sit through winter for an early spring harvest.
Cereal rye is still worth sowing on any bed you clear in early November. It germinates in cold soil when nothing else will.
Zone 8: garlic, and hardy transplants
Your first frost arrives in November: around November 8 in zone 8a and November 15 in zone 8b. Garlic goes in after it, November 8 to December 6 in 8a and November 15 to December 13 in 8b. Planting garlic in October here, with the bulbs, is the most common mistake in the zone. It pushes soft top growth in a mild December and gives you a smaller head in summer.
Transplants are the other November move. Kale, cabbage and collards set out early in the month are hardy enough to ride through the first frosts and keep growing through the mild spells that zone 8 winters are full of. In zone 8b lettuce transplants still work in early November. Seed sowing is mostly over: radishes had until October 18 in the open in zone 8a and until October 25 in 8b, and about two weeks longer under a cold frame.
Dallas is the example people ask about: zone 8a with a first frost around November 24. November in Dallas is garlic, shallots and a bed of kale and cabbage transplants.
Zones 9 and 10: the cool season opens
In zone 9a the first frost is not until about November 30, and in zone 10b not until the end of December. November is a sowing month here.
Radishes can be sown through November 9 in zone 9a and November 19 in zone 9b. Spinach goes in by November 2 in 9a and November 12 in 9b. Onion sets for overwintering run to November 9 in 9a and November 19 in 9b, and November 8 to November 29 in zone 10a. In zone 10b the list is longer: lettuce through November 11, kale through November 15, beets through November 13, cilantro through November 16, and carrots through about November 5.
Transplants of broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and kale are the easiest win in this band. The heat that made them bolt in September is gone, and a transplant skips the four to six weeks from seed that you no longer have before the cool season ends.
Houston is zone 9a with a first frost around December 9, so it runs a few days later than the zone average: sow radishes and spinach in the first half of November and set out brassica transplants any time in the month. Garlic here is a December job, from cloves chilled in the refrigerator for six to eight weeks, because the winter is not cold enough to trigger bulbing on its own.
Zone 11 and warmer: the start of the main season
South Florida, the Hawaiian lowlands and Puerto Rico have no frost to plan around, and November is when the main vegetable season begins. The whole cool-season list goes in from October through January: lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beets, peas, kale and cilantro. Tomatoes and peppers planted now fruit through winter, when the heat and humidity that ruin them in summer have eased off. The limit is summer, not winter, so everything should be finishing by April.
Winter vegetables: what actually makes it through
“Vegetables to grow in winter” means three different things depending on where you are.
In zones 3 to 5 it means crops that are planted in fall and sit dormant: garlic, and spinach or onions planted in September that stall as small plants and restart in March. Very little is harvested outdoors between December and February without a cold frame or tunnel.
In zones 6 to 8 it means crops that were planted in late summer and are simply held in the garden: kale and collards (which take hard frosts and get sweeter for it), leeks, carrots and parsnips under mulch, and spinach under a row cover. You are harvesting a standing crop, not growing a new one.
In zones 9 and warmer it means the normal cool season, and the list is almost everything except the heat lovers.
What not to plant in November
Anything a light frost kills, anywhere with a frost date. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, squash and basil need 80 to 100 frost-free days, and even zone 10b, with a first frost around December 31, has only about 60 left after November 1.
Seed sown for a harvest in zone 7 and colder. The fall sow-by dates for the fastest crops passed in October, and the days are now too short for a new sowing to size up before the Persephone stretch of December and January, when plants barely grow at all.
And tulips in zone 8 and warmer, unless they have had ten to twelve weeks in the refrigerator first. The October planting guide covers the chilling schedule.
For next year, the jobs that make November easy happen earlier. Sow cold frame greens in September, order garlic in August before the good varieties sell out, and check your frost date on the frost dates by city page before you plan anything.