Zone 9 - What to Plant in December

Zone 9 - What to Plant in December

Now is when the main planting is happening in zone 9. The hot and humid days of summer are behind us and we can start growing the garden. With a last frost date in early February you should start growing your tomatoes, peppers and other plants indoors so they are ready to transplant in February.

Thumbelina carrots are tender and sweet with no need to peel! It is the perfect bit size for fresh eating, stews and salads. Thumbelina's small size makes it a great choice for heavy or shallow soils or containers. No wonder it is an All-America Selections Winner from 1992!

The Hot and Happy Mix is a blend of hot pepper, all colors, shapes and heats. This mix of peppers are bold and adventurous! This assortment of hot peppers includes habaneros, jalapeños, chilies, poblanos, anchos and more! Hot and Happy Mix is perfect for any hot pepper lover!

The Sweetie Tomato is a prolific variety that produces an abundance of super sweet, small cherry-sized tomatoes, perfect for patio containers. This cherry tomato variety is one of the sweetest cherries around, as it boasts 12-14% sugar content and can be used for making juice or preserves without adding any extra sugar. This tomato grows exceptionally well in the home garden and will continuously produce until the first frost in fall. Sweetie produces .5-1" inch fruits in clusters of 15-20.

Snowball Y Improved cauliflower is a popular open pollinated variety! This cauliflower is known for its vigorous, rapid growth and long harvest. Its head is snow-white and measures 7-8" inches across. Give this cauliflower fertile soil, full sun and steady moisture and you'll be rewarded with large, delicious heads that are high in vitamin C.

With their wide, slightly flattened shape, the Mater Sandwich Tomato is great for slicing and layering, making it the perfect sandwich variety! This tomato is a large, slightly flat deep red tomato that lies across a piece of bread perfectly, tempting you with bits of bright red showing on all four sides! It stays together well too, so you get its juicy-meaty flavor in every bite. The Mater Sandwich is the king of sandwiches!

Scout is an early to main season intermediate variety and can make a good transition from intermediate to long days. It is a consistent yielder and a uniform producer of jumbo and colossal bulbs and holds up well to mechanical harvest.

Sugar Sprint Pea will sprint into the production of delicious peas! This fast maturing, heavy producing pea plant is one of the earliest maturing peas available. This pea variety produces 3" stringless snap peas over a long period. Sugar Sprint is heat tolerant and resistant to powdery mildew.

The Golden Jubilee Tomato has a meaty, thick, golden-orange skin with a mild flavor and is an All American Selection winning tomato! This medium sized beefsteak has low acidity and high Vitamin C content, making it a great choice for fresh eating and perfect for home gardens! This tomato variety's fruits are produced in a heavy yield from upright and uniform indeterminate vines, which makes this variety easy to manage. The Golden Jubilee was first introduced in 1943 by the Maule Seed Company of Philadelphia and has a flavor that is not too strong and pairs well with other ingredients.

A standout yellow tomato with exceptional flavor and improved performance. This updated version of the classic Lemon Boy offers enhanced disease resistance along with a bright, sweet-tangy taste that outshines many traditional yellow varieties. The flattened, round beefsteak fruits average 7–8 ounces and are uniform in size and shape with smooth, mostly blemish-free skin and good firmness. Plants are high yielding and widely adaptable thanks to a strong disease-resistance package that helps keep vines healthy and fruit clean. Harvest at a bright lemon-yellow stage or allow fruits to deepen to a rich golden color with a slight blush at the blossom end for fuller sweetness. Pick slightly early if you prefer a sharper, more acidic bite. Indeterminate plants produce over a long season.

Early maturing cabbage with tight heads! Stonehead is a fast grower with 6" heads that average between 4-6 lbs. when mature. Good texture and flavor. This hybrid resist yellow and black rot very well. A great market variety that matures early, won't split and holds well after harvest. Grows well throughout the United States. An All American Selection winner in 1969.

The Early Scarlet Globe is an early forcing radish that is perfect for home and market growers! This variety is a great bunching radish that produces 1" globes with bright red skin and a white flesh. The Early Scarlet Globe is great for both spring and fall planting!

The Speckled Roman is a plum shaped tomato with a great flavor! This tomato variety is a beautiful colored tomato and when mature, has a bright red skin with golden streaks. This meaty tomato has a thick flesh that is excellent raw in salads, and cooks quickly into different sauces.

The Ponderosa Pink Tomato is an extra large and tasty beefsteak with a bright pink hue that is perfect for fresh eating as well as cooked for sauces! This 16 ounce, beefsteak type is almost seedless with low acid.

Alexandria is a delicious alpine strawberry that produces delicious fruit. Deep scarlet and fragrant aromatics, these strawberries are the size of wild berries. Alexandria is an everbearing strawberry that can produce the first year if planted early. These day-neutral plants stay compact and produce few runners. Excellent for pots and window boxes.

Caliber is a late-season yellow long day for the western United States known for vigor, disease resistance, yield, and storage capabilities. Caliber is a Celebrate hybrid with a healthy plant with solid roots and strong and erect tops that assist in providing thrips tolerance and make applications easier. Caliber has a consistent rich bronze scale in super colossal bulbs with single centers that do very well with a mechanical harvest. Caliber has a reputation for storing very well long term. Disease Ratings: HT to Pink Root and Fusarium, T to Bolting and HT for Thrips

Caribbean Red Habanero is one of the hottest peppers available! This habanero is a wrinkled, red hot pepper that needs to be handled with caution! This variety can be picked green at around 70 days, but for a sweeter flavor, allow them to turn red!

The classic Burpee's Bush Big Boy Tomato is the same large, juicy favorite but has been made even better, especially for small-space gardeners. With this variety, you get the same number of tasty, big red tomatoes (10 to 11 oz. each), with the same sweet, aromatic, melt-in-your-mouth juiciness as the original, but the compact plants are only half the size!

Merlin is an early to main season short day yellow variety that produces a firm uniform bulb. It also has the Celebrate plant structure to give it an extra boost against stress and make it grower friendly. These qualities help to make it a good fit for a short day program. Disease Ratings: High Tolerance to Pink Root, Fusarium, and Bolting.