Why the Southeast Needs Its Own Book
Across Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Mississippi and Tennessee, the growing season is long and generous, but the humidity drives disease and the summer heat stalls cool-season crops. The winters are mild enough that greens, roots and brassicas carry on when the North is frozen. It is close to a year-round garden if you plan for the summer lull.
The soil is its own story: heavy red clay on the Piedmont, sandy soil on the coastal plain, both usually acidic and hungry for organic matter. Add fire ants, nematodes and humidity-loving fungi and you have a region no national book describes well. This one is written for it.
Planting Season Southeast fixes that. It calibrates to the region, gives the local shifts throughout, and works with your ground and your weather instead of against them.
What You Get Inside
The Full Chapter List
Seventeen main chapters plus a nine-part plant library. Every chapter is written for the Southeast. Every chapter assumes you want to eat what you grow.
The Plant Library (parts 1 through 9)
- Part 1: Leafy greens and brassicas, with the cool-season windows that suit Southeast
- Part 2: Fruiting vegetables, with okra, sweet potatoes, field peas and collards and the timing that works here
- Part 3: Root vegetables, with soil and season notes for the region
- Part 4: Heat-lovers and warm-season survivors
- Part 5: Legumes, beans and peas through the local seasons
- Part 6: Herbs, the ones that thrive and the ones to baby
- Part 7: Fruit trees, vines and perennials suited to Southeast
- Part 8: Regional and native edibles worth a place in the garden
- Part 9: Companion plants and flowers
Each plant entry includes Southeast sowing windows by season, spacing, sun, water needs, companions, common pests, common diseases, a kitchen-use note, and a realistic local tip.
A Sample from the Book
The Southeast is generous with its season and stingy with its summer. From last frost to first is a long stretch, but the middle of it, deep July and August, is when the humidity turns on the diseases and the heat stalls half the garden.
So the smart Southern garden runs in two big pushes, spring and fall, with a short list of heat-lovers, okra, southern peas, sweet potatoes, holding the fort through the worst of it. Plan for the lull and the region will feed you most of the year.
Who It's For
You just moved in, the yard is bare, and you want food growing next season. The book walks you through your first year, step by step.
You followed generic advice and lost crops to the wrong timing. This book tells you why, and gives you the calendar built for the Southeast.
You gardened somewhere else and moved. the Southeast keeps a different schedule. The book recalibrates your timing to local reality.
You rent, or you are short on space. The small-spaces chapter is built for patios, balconies and raised beds.
You want real food, lower grocery bills, and a yard that feeds the household year-round. The book is the 12-month plan for that.
You know your way around a garden. The plant library and the the Southeast-tuned calendar are the reference you keep on the bench.
Pair the book with the free Planting Season app
The book is the full reference; the free app is the day-to-day. the Southeast is covered month by month, with reminders tuned to your region and a mobile plant library you can search from the garden.
Open the Planting Season app →Why This Book, Not Another
Planting Season Southeast is written for the Southeast and nothing else. If a paragraph could apply unchanged to another part of the country, it does not belong in this book. The voice is plain and direct, the neighbor over the fence, not a textbook.
It is built to last: a genuine reference you come back to every season for years, paired with the free app for the day-to-day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which states does the Southeast book cover?
The humid Deep South and its uplands, broadly Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Tennessee and the warmer parts of the region, with the calendar flagging upland-versus-coastal differences.
Why so much about humidity?
Because it is the region's defining challenge. Humidity drives the fungal diseases that ruin tomatoes and squash, and the book leans hard on prevention, spacing, airflow and resistant varieties.
Can I really garden in winter here?
In much of the Southeast, yes. Greens, roots and brassicas carry through the mild winter. The book gives you the cool-season calendar to do it.
Does it work with the Planting Season app?
Yes. The app covers the Southeast month by month for free, and the book is the full reference to go with it.
Grow food every month of the year in the Southeast.
Planting Season Southeast is coming soon to Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Be first to know.
Every book includes 3 months of Pro free.
Gardening in another region? Browse the whole series →