ZoneSprout

When to plant Tomatoes Florida Zone 9a

Florida · USDA zone 9a

When to plant tomatoes in zone 9a, Florida

Florida zone 9a averages its last frost on 3 March and its first on 28 November — 273 days between them. Every window below is worked out from those two dates and from the 88 days a year this zone spends at or above 90°F.

Spring planting

Sow indoors6–20 January
Plant out10–24 March
Harvest4 May – 27 July

Fall planting

Sow indoors6–20 June
Plant out8–22 August
Harvest2 October – 28 November
This is Ocala, Gainesville and the top of the Orlando sprawl, and it gets two real crops. UF/IFAS puts north Florida’s fall tomatoes in during August, which is what the dates below work out to — and the fall crop is the one worth taking seriously, because a spring planting here runs headlong into a summer with eighty-eight days over 90°F. Above about 70°F at night a tomato keeps flowering and stops setting fruit, so a plant that looks healthy through July can give you nothing. Pick a heat-tolerant variety for the spring crop and you buy yourself a few more weeks of it.

Zone 9a is not zone 9a everywhere

14 states contain zone 9a. They share a coldest winter night and almost nothing else: the last frost spans 26 February to 1 May, and the number of days at or above 90°F runs from 0 to 158. A planting calendar that stops at “zone 9a” is giving all 14 the same advice.

Zone 9a, state by state. Florida in bold.
StateLast frostFirst frostSeasonDays ≥90°F
AZ 26 February 28 November 275 days 158
LA 1 March 25 November 268 days 90
SC 1 March 3 December 279 days 55
TX 1 March 27 November 273 days 121
FL 3 March 28 November 273 days 88
NC 3 March 20 December 291 days 10
AL 5 March 24 November 265 days 76
MS 6 March 22 November 262 days 71
GA 10 March 21 November 258 days 82
WA 13 March 14 November 247 days 2
CA 14 March 22 November 255 days 90
NV 16 March 20 November 245 days 138
OR 26 March 17 November 237 days 2
HI 1 May 15 November 198 days 0

Other zones in Florida: see all Florida zones for tomatoes.

Where these dates come from

The frost dates for Florida are NOAA’s 1991–2020 US Climate Normals — the 50% probability of a 32°F freeze, taken from weather stations standing inside zone 9a itself, not averaged across the state. The fall window follows UF/IFAS SP 103 / VH021, Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide. Everything else on this page is arithmetic on those two dates: the same inputs give the same answer every time.

Made only for gardeners in the United States

Your zone is one number about one winter night.

Every date above is worked out from Florida’s own frost records and its summer heat, read together — which is why two gardens in the same zone can be a month apart. ZoneSprout does that for 2,700 plants, in every zone of every state, and tells you what to do this week.

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