February Garden Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Florida Gardening

Wondering what you should plant in your Florida Vegetable Garden in the month of February? Check out this Florida Gardening Video where I give lots of Florida Gardening Tips to help you have a successful Florida Garden. When you are new to Gardening in Florida, you need all the help you can get so that you start a Florida Food Forest, grow a Central Florida Vegetable Garden, add color in your Tropical Garden, enjoy the best Florida Friendly Landscaping, and add Florida Native Plants.
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0:00 February Florida Gardening
0:18 Vegetables
3:29 Best Vegetables for Florida
10:51 Herbs
11:45 Tropical Fruits
13:38 February Gardening Tips
16:21 Flowers

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Howy neighbor how is your garden growing today we’re going to talk about what’s a plan what will be in bloom and the tips to keep you on track so that you can have the garden of your dreams in the sunshine Stak and to keep this conversation on track I’m going to be

Using my handy dandy wild Floridian Gardening Guide so let’s first talk vegetables when it comes to the month of February whether you live in North Central or South Florida or you’re Zone 8 9 or 10 everyone can still be doing cold weather crops cold weather CS if

You’re not familiar are going to be things from carrots lettuce onions beets all your brasas including broccolis KES caulif flowers whether you live in zone 8 or 9 you should consider starting to use things like transplants especially for some of your longer growing cold weather crops like brasas if you live in

South Florida you should in general at this point avoid doing cold weather crops even if we’re having a colder than usual winter unless you have a transplant starting min of these cold weather crops by seed is going to cause them to be very stressed and not very

Productive brings me to one of my tips when it comes to vegetables in the month of February is the difference between what we’re growing in North Florida and South Florida starts to become quite a bit different North Florida me you can really focus on those cold weather crops

Like radishes and beets and potatoes but this is the first month that if you’ve been thinking about things like tomatoes peppers eggplants and cucumbers you should be starting them by seed you can also depending on the type of warm weather crop go ahead and pick up transplants but just be ready to keep

Them protected because we still have some cold snaps coming in the month of February but if you live in my zone 9 my central Florida we’re starting to wrap up the cold weather season so if you do want to get some cold weather crops look for things that are kind of those quick

Turnarounds fast to go from seed to transplant or just go ahead and pick up transplants if you’re thinking of doing things like radishes beets or even lettu uses this is the time to get your last round of crops in before it starts to heat up the beginning of February tends

To stay cold enough where you don’t need to worry about these plants going and bolting or fading out but as we get towards the tail end of February can be a little bit on the cool side but we’re going to warm up pretty quickly as we

Head into March now if you’re not a South Floridian or in zone 10 you do still have time to get potatoes in the ground those classic potatoes now I have not been a big fan of growing those because I live in zone 10 and it’s a real big struggle to grow potatoes down

Here and it’s much easier to grow just white sweet potatoes but if you’re in North Florida or Central Florida you still have some time in my zone eights and zone 9es for potatoes now my South Floridians you’re in a very different spot if you’re a Zone 10 cold weather

Crops in general it’s just it’s too warm at this point for you to really get anything started by seed you might be able to sneak something out if you go ahead and just skip ahead and buy some pretty good siiz transplants but in general you really need to be focusing

On wrapping up your warm weather crops this is one of the last months for you to really really focus on warm weather crops like your tomatoes and pepper peers your eggplants and cucumbers and February is going to be actually the first month for my South lorans my zone

10 to consider actually doing hot weather crops so if you’re into doing things like okras Rosel sweet potatoes now is the time if you want to go ahead and get seeds in the ground or start growing your own transplants you should consider doing that now I wouldn’t be

Too quick because remember the beginning of February often times still has potential for really really cold weather but if you have a nice warm space for them this is a great time to get hot weather crops so since we’re in a transition period let me give you if

You’re thinking about squeezing in some of those cold weather crops before it heats up in your area for my zone eights and NES here’s a couple of the varieties that I think will do really well for you for being quick turnarounds before we get too hot so one of the crops you

Should consider is something like a butter crunch lettuce they’re actually pretty quick for you to get a pretty sizable head and because they’re a cut and come again it’s one of those crops that you can get Harvest a little bit Harvest a little bit Harvest a little

Bit you don’t need to even wait for this side for you to start harvesting you could even start it at this size I mean I guess technically this size too but you could do it at this size and that’s what we would actually recommend So within about 30 days of putting your

Seeds in the ground you could start to get something that’s this size also if you find transplants it’s could be a good way for you to get something quite sizable relatively quickly feeling a little too wary of starting something by seed go ahead and swing over to one of

Your local nurseries or even a Home Depot or Lowe’s usually in the month of February for my zone 10 and 11s They are already starting to carry some of the classic vegetables in the smaller trays so keep your eye out if you want to get a better deal there or buy your local

Nursery now if I was going to consider doing a Brasa and I really really wanted to start by seed I would do Dino kale unlike many of the brasas like cauliflowers and broccoli that will not like it when we start getting really warm Dino kale is one of the ones that

Actually went for me in zone 10 I’m officially gone from Zone 10A to 10B if you want to get a sense of this I had kale going not only through the entirety of this spring but this also went into June and July which for me are very hot

And intense months so if you’ve been really wanting to do something like a leafy green that’s going to go the distance and being that Brasa family I would do something like a dino kale if you’re at that transition point because this is one of the few plants that will

Actually go for a pretty good distance of the spring and into the early summer if you’re looking for something that’s other than leafy greens and actually will get you more of a classic vegetable consider doing something like carrots but go for the shorter time span from

Seed to harvest you’re not going to be able to or you shouldn’t in general buy any pre- started carrot seeds they don’t like transplanting it’s pretty common thing with root crops I would go with something like these short and sweets you can pick them up by seed they only

Take 60 to 90 days for Harvest and even in our a little bit warmer areas you can still get a decent turnaround if you’re worried about things like sun intensity and heat go ahead and put them in containers and then move them around into semi-shady spots where it’ll be a

Little bit cooler and we allow you to kind of finish off those carrots now if you’re looking for something really easy in the cold weather crop area but you don’t want to start by seed and you’re getting intimidated by the other things one of the easiest things for you to

Grow is you can grow green onions by just going to your grocery store and buying green onions chopping off the tops and then replanting them these are ones that we replanted recently and within a week or two we already have this amount of growth so even if we’re

Really really far behind in the season you can already be a harvest in a couple of weeks when it comes to things like these green onions of course you can use them in lots of different dishes we use them in a green onion soup which for the month of February is actually really

Nice cuz who doesn’t like a nice warm hearty soup when it’s cold out of course if you’re thinking about something like tomatoes of course the easiest type of tomato to grow in Florida is this insanely shrubby plant it’s called everglazed tomato and if you remember

There was a video where I took this out of the ground and just shoved it back in and um it’s it’s um it’s gotten quite large it’s quite bushy if you’re not familiar with things like everglazed tomatoes they are current style tomato which means they’re really small about

That big and you can throw them in everything from salads I’ve made salsa from them they’re really easy to grow they’re very sweet and you only need a couple plants to get a huge Harvest and what’s great is if you’re kind of on this late end with starting Tomatoes

Like in down in South Florida they can handle the heat and humidity of Florida better than any other type of tomato but no fear if you are like in Cal Florida and north Florida and are starting to consider well what other varieties might I go and do here are a couple others to

Add to your list here’s what we would call a early treat tomato you can find these C packets anywhere from Home Depot Lowe’s Target Walmart it’s one of those fairy Morris packs they make decent sized tomatoes so they’ve got a couple months still to go in my garden but it’s

One you should consider and here we’ve got another variety that you might want to consider which is 4th of July this name is super deceiving it probably works better in other areas which is it’s supposed to have nice sized tomatoes for 4th of July but here in

Florida we would start them way too early and we would not have them in time again they were very similar to the early treat they’re going to have that nice 6 oz style tomato so about that big you can use them as slicers you can use

Them to make Salsas and sauces and can be an easy plant similar you can just pick up the packets online or at places like Target Walmart Home Depot Lowe’s wherever you kind of see those General cack aisle things if you’re thinking to yourself I don’t know if I’m really good

At seeds and I don’t really want to try it and find out this time well I really really recommend you check out your local nurseries for plants you may consider going to Home Depot and Lowe’s but I will tell you the prices are way way more expensive when it comes to

Tomatoes a plant this size I don’t know if you can see these tomatoes on here this is a chocolate Cherokee typically if you at a Home Depot in Lowe’s this size plant would cost you about $ 20 to $30 but I was able to pick it up at

Sweet Bay one of Mind local nurseries that sells native plants for about $5 a plant here they have a purple Cherokee and in past years I’ve gone to other local nurseries like Wilcox where they’ve had plants that are a lot smaller if you don’t want to invest like

In a $5 plant they’ve had ones that’s low as a dollar to $2 so I highly highly recommend go check out your local nursery and see if you can get some decent sized plants to get you ahead of the game those who are definitely in the

Hot weather crops some of the things you should be thinking about is of course seminal pumpkins if you’re not familiar with seminal pumpkins just think butternut squash they don’t look like them but they’re in the same family and essentially any recipe that there is for butternut squash you can use a seminal

Pumpkin especially for my South Florida my zone 10s once you get seminal pumpkin established like in a Zone 10 they can actually go almost the entirety of the Year these plants are not new they are just the same plants re-rooting and growing and throwing out pumpkins over

And over again so if you’re looking for a lowish effort plant that can produce tons and tons and tons of pounds consider investing in some seminal pumpkin seeds you can pick these up at places like Southern Exposure sometimes they’re listed as seminol pumpkins or seminal squash it’s basically the same

Thing another plant you should consider if especially my zone 10 to get started now is sweet potatoes there are so many different types and varieties of sweet potatoes from your classic orange to white sweepy potatoes so if you’re thinking about it you can go ahead and

Do that you can do it my way which is literally once you get the sweet potatoes you just Chuck them in the ground and put a little bit of mulch over and then it’s like bam you got sweet potatoes and of course this would be a early and quick Harvest for my zone

10 because you can start harvesting those greens as within gosh I don’t know within 30 days you’re going to have leaves in 30 days and you can use those as a greens alternative I wouldn’t recommend them necessarily for salads but they’re good addition for smoothies let’s switch gears into herbs because

We’re in the winter time you still have time for things like thyme fennel parsley and of course cilantro now for myself Floridians it might quickly go to Cory Ander but you do have a little bit of time because the sun intensity isn’t quite up there yet so do try to get

Yourself some cilantro in the ground before it bolts now if some of you are feeling a little bit bad because you didn’t get garlic started back before winter and you didn’t go and get onion started a couple months ago but you’re longing to add those flavors to the

Cuisines and to your Harvest you can go and invest in something like chives you have the option of doing both onion or garlic chives so if you’re okay with having dishes that don’t use necessarily the garlic bulb or the onion bulb you can invest in something like a onion

Chive or a garlic chive and still get really strong flavors all throughout spring and summer let’s talk fruit when it comes to the month of February and planting different fruit types crops there are only a few for most of the state that actually will work and that really is sugar cane pineapples and

Ginger these are plants that can actually handle the cold of Florida but if you’re kind of planning ahead you want to make sure that you have yearr round Harvest of fruit there are still fruiting plants that are putting out Harvest definitely recommend adding Citrus to your future plants because

Citrus is a great producer in the winter time whether you want to go with things like oranges lemons limes grapefruits or one of my favorites to tell people to start with which is the Canden aka the kalanzi you can pick these up at Home Depot Lowe’s and some of your local

Nurseries it’s a very small plant Compact and you can actually grow it in a pot but if you’re looking for something beyond centrus that is starting to be able to produce let me recommend this mle berries while it can be challenging for many parts of the

State to be able to grow classic berries like blackberries and blueberries and strawberries mulberries are ridiculously easy I highly recommend either our native mberry or the everbearing mberry this puts out huge Harvest I have found that that with my everbearing mberry which is technically a large shrub SL

Small Bush that I can get anywhere from 20 to 30 lb per plant of berries which is like a lot it’s like a lot a lot of berries if you’re unfamiliar with mulberries I would say there’s somewhere between a Blackberry and a raspberry when it comes to flavor and texture and

What’s great about this fruiting tree is it doesn’t take years and years and years to get your first harvest for me and my mulberries it only took about 18 months from the first time that I planted them to get up decent size hard Harvest and for actually the plant to

Pay for itself if you’re thinking about year round Harvest I would definitely consider adding a malberry shrub or an everberry mberry to your list now before we jump into some of the blooms let’s hit a couple of the tips that you should be thinking about for the month of

February especially when it comes to your vegetable and Herb crops you need to be thinking and watching out for the weather still while we are starting to head towards the end of winter February just as much as January has very significant cold snaps that can lead to

Damage to your crop CRS and some of your critical plants that cannot handle those freezing temperatures but with this really cold weather you can actually take advantage of it when it comes to certain plant that’s why I actually recommend in the month of February that you do some pretty significant surveys

Of your land and look for areas that have a lot of invasive weeds whether you use natural methods or you use chemical methods most weeds in your yard right now are tropical in nature and they are super stressed which means that anything that you do to get rid of them whether

It’s put water on so that they freeze or you dig them up or you apply a local heride it decreases the chance that these plants get a really good foothold as everything warms up and then they have the chance to take off so take advantage of the colder temperatures to

Really work on spots that have aggressive weeds in them February is still in the middle of drought season which which means your plants with shallower root systems can get more stressed out and if you don’t have the time to be constantly checking your soil to see if it’s dry enough or wet enough

You should consider adding a mulch to your vegetable garden beds and anywhere you have new transplants to help maintain that moisture one from evaporation and two from it just running through our sandy sandy soil and applying a mulch at this time of year is actually a very wise thing to do because

This can act as a double duty not only helping you maintain moisture better but also suppressing those weeds that are just about to get ready to take off another thing you should be thinking about as we are in the month of February is are there any really large

Infrastructure projects you need to do yes the Colder Weather can make it a little bit more stress for making sure we don’t have cold snaps but the cooler weather is actually nice when you have to go and do larger projects like build trishes or put in large raised garden

Beds I know my husband and I have a very long to-do list for the month of February so that we can knock those out before it starts heating back up now this next tip whether you live in a Zone 8 9 or 10 one of the things you guys

Need to be thinking about is is adding flowers for pollinators why well so many of you have been focused on warm weather crops whether they’re tomatoes cucumbers eggplants one of the big differences between cold weather crops and warm weather crops is warm weather crops need pollinators to give you really good

Harvest and if you really want to maximize your Harvest besides doing all the usual typical vegetable gardening tips one of the best ways you can increase it with very low effort is adding pollinator friendly blooms to your garden which brings me to my next area let’s talk about Native flowers and

What will be blooming in the month of February so that you can attract the most pollinators to your garden and increase your vegetable harvest my number one pick for blooms this month hands down if you want to add something to your garden that’s going to bring in

Bees that will help you with tomatoes and peppers for sure and eggplants I would be adding tropical Sage it comes in three colors which is you have the coral red gorgeous white and my favorite flamingo pink are amazing attracting pollinators so whether you’re looking for bees or butterflies or you can get

Even a bonus with hummingbirds tropical Sage is definitely something if you’re a beginner when it comes to native plants to add to your garden I don’t know if I dare recommend this but one of the hands down best pollinator plants this month is Biden’s Alba AKA Spanish needle or

Beggar tick it’s got a lot of names that aren’t really cute but Biden’s Alba is its scientific name Biden’s Alba is actually a critical plant that is the third most common source of pollen and nectar for our pollen in the State of Florida but I hesitate to recommend it

Because this thing is such a prolific reater that once you have it in your yard you may never get it back out so you can do what I’ve done before which is I put it in a pot and as soon as it’s done blooming and starting to head to

Set seed I just cut off the flowers and I Chuck them what’s great about Biden zba is it will Bloom and Bloom and Bloom again actually almost the entirety of the year but it looks its best in the winter months basically January and February is when it kind of has these

Gorgeous gorgeous super blooms you can often see it along the highway you will see huge patches of white that is Biden’s album but if that seems a little like oo I don’t know about that jacine I’m thinking I would like something that flowers and maybe can almost be like a h

Herb substitute add some aromatics to my garden and isn’t likely to take over my entire property and that would be something like scrub mint this is a great plant you could actually plant it really close to your vegetable garden or you can put this in a pot is great at

Attracting bees and just like the name says scrub mint smells like mint it’s pretty compact so if you plant it it’s not going to go everywhere and it doesn’t look quite as wild as some of our other native wild flowers another one that I would really really recommend

Especially if you’re looking for a burst of color my zone 10’s right now Beach Verina looks so good oh my gosh it is looking so good right now and it is a favorite of butterflies now while February is going to on the front end be a little bit too cold for butterflies as

We get to the back end of February you really do want to have these high neor plants like beach Rina so that as our monarchs start coming out cloudless sulfur white peacocks all these different butterflies you’re going to have some really good nectar sources available for them and they’ll be

Attracted to your Arts you also get be so if you want to go ahead and put this near something like your vegetable garden and create a really cute border with it this would be one of the plants I would recommend now if you’re looking for something that’s not as annual and

More perennial something that’ll be there year after year and it’s going to give you some really good size blooms let’s talk about our large shrubs to trees that can add color and can bring pollinators to your garden for my people who are into edible plants of course the

Chickasaw Plum will be going into bloom this is our native Plum to Florida there are a lot of actual native edible plants so if you’re into the plums and you’re in north and Central Florida consider adding chickena Plum to your garden so that you are getting February blooms

Other gorgeous native small trees that you should consider adding to your garden from North and Central Florida would be plants like eastern redbud Eastern Dogwood now if you’re interested in having something that’s more fit in a Cottage Garden slash could be in a wild wild landscape French STP is actually a

Really amazing one and if you’ve ever seen one of close oh my goodness are they covered covered in bees also for my North and Central floridans you can also add things like Japanese magnolia this isn’t our native Magnolia this would be an exotic Magnolia but it can actually

Survive in north and Central Florida and the Taiwan Cherry now never fear my South Floridians there’s still a lot going on in your area you should be considering adding things like Bugan via which has been bloom all over the place in my zone 10 or you can also add your

Hong Kong orchid but if you’re looking for a native plant that may go into a Super Bloom and also help you attract birds you should consider Marberry for South Florida this native tree is one of many that I recommend in this video right here where I talk about 10

Different Native shrubs and trees that you can use to attract birds to your garden if you’re thinking about getting into native plants to track pollinators these are my 10 beginner native plants that I would recommend and if you’re thinking about warm weather crops and you want to know my five top easiest

Recommended plants for the Florida go ahead and check out this video right here you can get this plus more tips in the wild Floridian garden planner so go ahead and pick that up right here okay I’ll see you soon bye