What plants grow in winter?

Hardy greens and roots keep working near freezing: spinach, mâche, kale, leeks, garlic, carrots, and radishes. They tolerate cold tissue rather than putting on fast growth, so they hold through the season and leaf out whenever the soil thaws. Which ones live in your yard depends on your coldest night.

What plants survive winter outside?

Spinach and mâche hold through the teens, while kale and leeks survive into the single digits once earlier cold has hardened them. Garlic planted in fall roots under mulch through winter. Each of these has a rated low, and it must sit below your yard's coldest recorded night to survive there.

What vegetables can I plant in winter?

In cold ground you plant hardy roots and greens: garlic cloves, spinach, mâche, and overwintering onions go in before the ground locks up. In our own garden we direct-seeded radishes in early July and lettuce and spinach in late July for a fall and winter run. Timing depends on when your first hard frost arrives.

Which plants are frost resistant?

Frost-resistant crops tolerate ice forming in their tissue without the cells collapsing, which describes kale, leeks, spinach, mâche, garlic, and carrots. A rating tells you the low a plant survives, so a crop rated to 10°F dies when your yard hits 5°F. Match the rating to your real low with a few degrees of margin.

July 31, 2026 · Updated September 12, 2026

The plants that grow in winter depend on how cold your yard gets

The plants that grow in winter are the hardy greens and roots that keep working near freezing: spinach, mâche, kale, leeks, garlic, carrots, and radishes. Which of them live through your winter depends on your coldest night. The zone on the seed packet only averages that number across a wide region.

Why your coldest night decides

A winter crop survives by tolerating cold in its tissue. Ice forms between the cells first, then pulls water out of them. Below a plant's tolerance the cells collapse and the leaf turns to mush. A crop rated to 10°F dies when your yard hits 5°F.

Cold air is denser, so on a still night it drains downhill and pools in the lowest part of your yard. A hardiness zone gives the average annual low for a wide area. The pocket your beds sit in can differ from that average by several degrees in either direction.

In our own garden the coldest night of 2026 dropped to 3°F, and our station reads about 7°F colder than the regional forecast on those still nights. A zone-7a rating alone would not have told us that.

What survives outside

Spinach and mâche. Greens that hold through the teens and keep leafing whenever the soil thaws.
Kale and leeks. They survive into the single digits once earlier cold has hardened them.
Garlic. Planted in fall, it roots through winter under mulch, then bulbs in spring.
Carrots and radishes. Roots that store in cold ground and sweeten after frost.

In our own garden we direct-seeded radishes in early July and lettuce and spinach in late July for a fall and winter run. The hardier of those greens keep going long after the tender summer crops are gone. See frost-resistant plants against your real low for where each crop gives out.

How to pick for your yard

Match each crop's rated low to your yard's real low, and leave a few degrees of margin. To learn your real low you have to track your own overnight temperatures across a winter or two. You can enter a manual offset against the forecast for free. A connected station learns the gap for you after about 14 overlapping nights, which is how we found our 7°F difference. The microclimate checker compares recent nights near you and reports how much colder the area runs.

A hardy-crop list cannot tell you whether your particular bed freezes harder than the yard around it. Raised beds lose heat from every side, so they often run colder than the ground on the same night. Check the low where the plants sit.

Start by pulling your coldest recorded night, then plant only crops rated below it with room to spare. See winter-hardy plants against your yard's real low for the crop-by-crop cutoffs.

Common questions

What plants grow in winter?: Hardy greens and roots keep working near freezing: spinach, mâche, kale, leeks, garlic, carrots, and radishes. They tolerate cold tissue rather than putting on fast growth, so they hold through the season and leaf out whenever the soil thaws. Which ones live in your yard depends on your coldest night.
What plants survive winter outside?: Spinach and mâche hold through the teens, while kale and leeks survive into the single digits once earlier cold has hardened them. Garlic planted in fall roots under mulch through winter. Each of these has a rated low, and it must sit below your yard's coldest recorded night to survive there.
What vegetables can I plant in winter?: In cold ground you plant hardy roots and greens: garlic cloves, spinach, mâche, and overwintering onions go in before the ground locks up. In our own garden we direct-seeded radishes in early July and lettuce and spinach in late July for a fall and winter run. Timing depends on when your first hard frost arrives.
Which plants are frost resistant?: Frost-resistant crops tolerate ice forming in their tissue without the cells collapsing, which describes kale, leeks, spinach, mâche, garlic, and carrots. A rating tells you the low a plant survives, so a crop rated to 10°F dies when your yard hits 5°F. Match the rating to your real low with a few degrees of margin.

Related guides

Free planting tools

When to plant — the last date to sow each crop before your fall frost
Microclimate checker — how much colder your yard runs than the forecast
GDD estimator — whether a crop will ripen where you are