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FIMBY: When to plant summer vegetables

First weeks of spring bring plenty of warm-season activity

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED APR 8, 2025

Tomato transplants now are in good supply in local nurseries, but when should you plant? Kathy Morrison

This is another in our “Food in My Back Yard” series, dedicated to edible gardening.

April is Sacramento’s gardening sweet spot: The weather is just about perfect for being outdoors. In the vegetable garden, cool-season crops are nearing maturity while warm-season favorites are ready to plant.

Managing space in these overlapping seasons can feel like juggling reservations at a popular restaurant – everybody wants that same sunny spot.

Don’t push out the peas before they’re done just because some tomatoes are lined up to take their place. Those cool-season crops took weeks or months to get to this point; why pull them (and waste their potential produce) just to get an early start on something else?

Vegetables are more flexible than people. The whole summer garden doesn’t need to be planted in one April day. Instead, focus on windows of opportunity and succession.

Planning and patience are important gardening skills. Planning lets gardeners make the most of available opportunities. Patience lets nature take its course.

Weather will be the biggest variable in any vegetable garden. (The seed packet may say those radishes are ready to harvest in 40 days, but only if they got enough sun, warmth and water.) So, plan for that, too. That’s succession planting; for example, plant a row of radishes a week over four different weeks instead of planting the whole seed packet at once. Spreading out the planting dates lengthens the harvest as well as makes allowances for less than ideal weather.

The same goes with tomato transplants. Don’t plant them all on one day; stagger their transplants over several weeks – or even months.

Last year’s tomato crop served as interesting lesson about the importance of staggered planting times. In our community garden, the bulk of tomatoes were transplanted the last week of April – the traditional tomato transplanting time in Sacramento. But intense heat in early and mid May – just as those young bushes were flowering – dried up tomato pollen, so those plants set no fruit.

But bushes planted in early April and June had abundant tomatoes, because their flowers were able to pollinate when it wasn’t above 95 degrees.

In addition, bushes planted really, really late – after the Fourth of July – produced big crops in October and November, thanks to warm fall weather.

So much for only planting tomatoes the last week of April.

There are some basic guidelines about when to plant, thanks to ag science. Remember: Only use guidelines designed for where you garden.

For Sacramento County, UC researchers crunched the numbers from decades of harvests for 54 different vegetables. They boiled down those results to create a detailed “Sacramento Vegetable Planting Schedule.” Find it here.

According to these guidelines, tomatoes can be transplanted anytime from April 15 to June 30.

Veggies recommended to plant in mid to late April from seed: Lima and snap bean, carrots, celery, celeriac, Swiss chard, corn, cucumbers, collards, melons, okra, potatoes, radishes, spinach, squash and watermelon. Transplants of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and sweet potatoes can be set out in April, too.

And if the peas need more time, those veggies also can wait to be planted in May.

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Flowers in My Back Yard Series

Aug. 18: Pollinators adore scabiosa, aka pincushion flower

Aug. 11: Hardy hibiscus adds big tropical impact

Aug. 4: Dianthus a deceptively hardy flower

July 28: Naked Ladies put on summer show

July 21: Thank Luther Burbank for these long-lasting beauties (Shasta daisies)

July 14: How to keep hydrangeas happy

July 7: Grow these bright cosmos for bees and butterflies

June 30: Agapanthus adds blue fireworks to the garden

June 23: Easy-care gazanias fill those hot corners

June 16: Daylilies are perfect for water-wise gardens (and a lot more)

June 9: Grow coneflowers for pollinators -- and yourself

June 2: Sunflowers capture Sacramento's summer attitude

May 29: Are your roses going 'blind'?

May 26: Zinnias are the summer flowers every garden needs

May 19: Plant dahlias now for late-summer flower power

May 12: Know your coreopsis from your bidens

May 5: Mums the word on Mother's Day weekend

April 28: Majestic Matilija poppy is worth a look

April 21: Celebrate roses, America's favorite flower

April 14: Small flowers with outsized impact

April 7: Calendulas do double duty

April 3: Make Easter lilies last for years to come

March 31: In praise of a pollinator magnet (small-leaf salvias)

March 24: Azaleas brighten shady spots

March 17: The perfect flower for beginners? Try zonal geraniums

March 10: Keep camellias happy for years to come

March 3: Fruit tree blossoms are a fleeting joy

Feb. 27: Are your roses looking rusty?

Feb. 24: Treasure spring daffodils now and for years to come

Feb. 17: How and why to grow wildflowers

Feb. 10: Let's talk Valentine's Day roses

Feb. 3: Why grow flowers?

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Garden checklist for week of Aug. 16

During this break in the heat, feed your garden. Make sure to water before and after applying fertilizer.

* In the garden, direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips.

* Plant potatoes.

* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers. Also, give them a boost with phosphate-rich fertilizer to help fruiting.

* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.

* Feed citrus trees their last round of fertilizer for the year. This will give a boost to the fruit that’s still small.

* Mulch can be your garden’s best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don't let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.

* Camellia leaves looking a little yellow? Give them some chelated iron. That goes for azaleas and gardenias, too.

* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot. Then feed fruit trees with slow-release fertilizer for better production for next year.

* To prolong bloom into fall, feed begonias, fuchsias and container plants. Always water before fertilizing.

* Fertilize fall-blooming perennials, too. Chrysanthemums can be fed until the buds start to open.

* Prepare for a fall full of flowers by paying a little extra attention to your garden. Cut off spent blooms from roses, annuals and perennials, then give them a boost of fertilizer. Make sure to water plants before feeding. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.

* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.

* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.

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