Melbourne Vegetable Planting Calendar
What to plant, and when — month by month, built from the sowing schedule at our Clyde nursery.
Timing is most of the battle with vegetables. Plant at the right moment and an ordinary gardener gets a good crop. Plant three weeks late and an expert struggles.
This calendar is built from our own sowing schedule at Clyde — what we actually put in the ground each month to have seedlings finished when Melbourne gardeners are ready to plant them.
Where to buy. Plantex is a wholesale nursery and doesn’t sell to the public. Our seedlings are stocked by independent garden centres and Mitre 10 stores across Victoria — ask for Plantex by name. Retail nurseries can see how to buy from us.
The short version
| Season | What goes in |
|---|---|
| Spring Sep–Nov | The big one. Tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, cucumber, zucchini, basil, corn. Wait for the soil to warm before the heat-lovers go out. |
| Summer Dec–Feb | Successional lettuce and salad lines, more basil, and the first brassicas for autumn. |
| Autumn Mar–May | The brassica window. Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, leek, celery, silverbeet, rainbow chard, garlic. |
| Winter Jun–Aug | Hardy greens keep going — spinach, lettuce, spring onion — with the perennial herbs. Tomato seed goes in under cover for spring. |
Month by month
January – February
Height of summer, and the moment to start thinking about autumn. Broccoli, cauliflower and kale are sown now for autumn planting. Keep successional lettuce, coriander and parsley going. Basil is still happy.
March – April
The busiest sowing window of our year. Brassicas across the board — broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, choy sum — plus leek, celery, silverbeet and rainbow chard. Garlic goes in. Lettuce and the salad mixes continue.
May – June
Cool-season crops settle in. Spinach, spring onion, rocket, more leek and celery. The perennial herbs — thyme, oregano, mint, chives, parsley — are sown steadily. Strawberry runners go in.
July – August
Quiet outdoors, busy under cover. This is when tomato seed goes in for the spring rush — our first batch is finished and ready from August. Basil, lettuce and parsley keep ticking over.
September – November
The season everyone waits for. Tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini and corn all go out once the soil has warmed. More on tomato season and what we grow. Basil comes into its own. This is the peak for retail nurseries, and the stock has to be ready before the first warm weekend, not after it.
December
Successional sowing keeps salad crops coming through summer. Start the next round of brassicas for autumn.
A note on frost
Home gardeners in Melbourne’s south-east lose more seedlings to impatience than to anything else. Tomatoes, capsicum, chilli and cucurbits are all frost-tender — putting them out before the last frost risks the lot.
Our own crops are grown in heated and cold poly houses with frost programs running on the irrigation clocks, which is how we can have finished seedlings ready before the outdoor season starts. Your garden doesn’t have that protection.
Choosing what to plant
Variety matters more than most people realise. A tomato bred for commercial production sets fruit reliably and resists disease; one bred for looks on a seed packet may do neither.
We grow F1 hybrid varieties — the same genetics commercial growers use — so a home gardener gets a plant that performs. More on why we grow F1 hybrids.
Retail nurseries and garden centres: ask about our weekly stock list, out every Friday afternoon.
Call 03 5998 5552 or email sales@plantexnursery.com.au
See our seasonal growing updates for what is cropping at Clyde right now, or read why we grow F1 hybrid seedlings.