Your Spring Veggie Garden Starts Now (But Not All of It)

It’s warm season and the flowers are out in an abundance! I’m going to be controversial and ask you to ignore them for now. Houston natives aren’t even flowering yet, so you have time. The real must do for you in March is your fall veggie garden and your front yard needs to wait its turn.

Get Your Beds Ready First

If you're growing vegetables in Houston, you're almost certainly growing in raised beds — and if you're not, you should be. Our native clay soil drains poorly, and most vegetables want nothing to do with it without significant amendment. The math on amending in-ground beds gets prohibitive fast: herbs need a minimum of 4–6 inches of well-draining, compost-amended soil to really perform. Tomatoes need at least 12 inches — 18 if you want the big ones. That's a lot of shale, sand, and compost before you've planted a single thing. Raised beds just make more sense.

Starting a new raised bed: Fill with a quality raised bed mix and amend generously with compost throughout. You want something that drains well but holds moisture — a blend with expanded shale or coarse sand helps with drainage, organic compost feeds the biology. Don't skip depth. A 6-inch bed is fine for herbs and flowers; go 12–18 inches for tomatoes and other fruiting crops. New beds are often completely nutrient depleted so adding a balanced slow release fertilizer to the top few inches is a great start. Do in a few days before planting crops so that you don’t "burn” the roots of the baby plants.

Existing beds: Top-dress with 1–2 inches of compost now and work it in lightly. After a winter of rain and microbial activity, your beds are hungry and ready to absorb it. This is also a good time to check your irrigation — veggie gardens need consistent moisture, and Houston's spring can swing between downpours and dry stretches without warning. Early spring is also time for a good feeding. Sidedress existing plants by adding fertilizer in a ring 12-ish inches around the plant.

When choosing fertilizers, I highly recommend sending a soil sample off to Texas A&M Soil Testing lab. Results take a week and you get real recommendations for what to feed your plants. WORTH IT!

Starting Seeds Indoors

If you're starting from seed — and I'd encourage you to try it — setup matters almost as much as seed selection.I start mine in my backyard greenhouse, which I know isn't accessible for everyone, but the core principle is just warmth and shelter. A sunny windowsill, a grow light setup, or even a covered porch can work for most spring starts. What you're protecting against is the temperature swings we still get in late February and early March.

For soil, I make my own mix, but there are excellent off-the-shelf seed starting mixes that will serve you well — just make sure it's light and well-draining, not regular potting soil. For cells, I use Bootstrap Farmer's seed starting kit with their 1-inch air propagating cells. I love them because they're reusable, easy to clean, and the air pruning means healthier roots than what you get from standard plastic trays.

Seed companies I trust and buy from regularly:

Botanical Interests — beautiful variety selection, excellent germination rates

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds — where I go for interesting and unusual varieties

Johnny's Selected Seeds — reliable, especially for herbs and greens

Native American Seed —wide variety of Texas native plants

Pine Tree Garden Seeds — underrated and worth exploring

When I'm choosing what to grow, I lean toward things I'll actually eat constantly — herbs like basil and mint, cut flowers I can bring inside —I’m zinnia obsessed, and a couple of workhorses like tomatoes or cucumbers. I keep the long-lead, high-maintenance crops to one or two plants rather than dedicating half my garden to something I'll harvest twice.

What to Plant Right Now (And I Mean Now)

Here's where Houston gardeners who've absorbed national gardening content get into trouble: most of what you've read about spring planting timing wasn't written for you. It was written for climates that are still thawing out in March. We are not those climates

.Once Houston's average temperature is consistently above 60°F and frost risk is gone — which for us is right around late February into early March — it's warm season planting time. That means:

Tomatoes — get them in the ground now if you haven't already. This gives them a long establishment window before temperatures climb above 85–90°F, at which point tomatoes essentially stop producing. They'll survive the heat, but they won't be setting much fruit. The window is now.

Peppers (sweet and hot), cucumber, summer squash, watermelon, corn, sweet potato — all go in March

Warm season herbs — basil, mint, oregano, lemon balm, hyssop are all ready to go in now

Flowers — zinnia, cosmos, gomphrena, and marigold transplants can go in now and are easy to grow from seed. Sunflowers are also a March seed — but plant them in the ground, not in raised beds. Sunflowers are allelopathic, meaning they release compounds that inhibit the growth of neighboring plants. Keep them in their own space.

What's Actually Wrapping Up

This is the part that surprises people: your cool season vegetables are on borrowed time. Lettuce, collard greens, broccoli, cabbage, peas, carrots, beets — these belong to October through March in Houston. If you still have them in the ground, enjoy them now because they'll bolt or decline as temperatures rise through April.

Don't rush out to plant more lettuce. That ship has sailed until fall.

The cool season herb exception: dill and chamomile actually prefer the cooler months, so hold off on those until next October.

What's Coming (Start From Seed Now)

A few of the best performers for Houston's genuine summer heat — okra, sorrel, and eggplant — haven't hit nursery shelves yet and won't until late April or May, once soil temperatures are consistently at or above 70°F. But if you want a head start, now is the perfect time to start them from seed indoors. They'll be ready to transplant right when conditions are ideal.

These are the plants that actually love what Houston does in June and July. If you've ever felt like your garden gives up by summer, these are worth getting to know.

That idea — choosing what belongs in your environment rather than fighting the season — is exactly what I want to talk about next when it comes to your landscape. Because the same boom-bust cycle that happens in vegetable gardens happens in front yard beds every single spring, and the fix is simpler than you'd think.

More on that in my next post.

Nicole is a Texas Master Gardener, TNLA certified professional, and the founder of Flourish Garden Solutions. She has strong opinions about soil and seed catalogs.