Cool-Season Planting Guide

This printable puts the whole cool-season planting plan for USDA Zone 9b on two pages — which vegetables to sow from seed, which to start as transplants, what grows well beside them, and how to group crops in beds and containers. It is written for low-desert and Zone 9b conditions, where the cool-season window runs from late fall through winter.

One note before you plant: exact planting dates vary with the year, your microclimate, and your local frost dates — use the guide as your planning reference and adjust the timing to what your own garden is doing.

What's Inside

• A crop-by-crop table for 13 vegetables — lettuce, spinach, kale, Swiss chard, carrots, radishes, arugula, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, and green onions — showing which to direct-sow, which to transplant, and companion plants for each
• Container and bed groupings for small spaces, like Swiss chard ringed with green onions and herbs, or lettuce and radishes succession-planted with carrots
• Planting notes for the season — shade cloth on very warm days, light feeding every 2–3 weeks, mulching, succession sowing, and watching for aphids and whiteflies

How to Use the Guide

Print it and keep it with your garden notes or seed box. The table works as a sowing checklist while you are filling beds, and the groupings help when you are deciding what goes where. Local conditions and frost timing always come first — the guide is the reference, your garden sets the dates.

Related Reading

• Protecting Your Crops: A Guide to Using Frost Cloths — covering tender crops when a cold night shows up
• Low Maintenance Winter Garden Plants — the hardy crops that need the least fuss through winter