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Yard guide

What to plant, and when

If you moved here from somewhere with real seasons, the planting calendar is close to upside down. In the Mojave, fall is the main planting season and summer is the dead zone.

The one rule worth remembering

Plant trees, shrubs, and perennials in the fall — roughly October and November.

The reason is roots. Our soil stays warm long after the air cools, so a plant put in the ground in October spends the whole winter growing roots with no heat stress and little demand from its leaves. By the time its first June arrives, it has a root system that can find water. The identical plant put in the ground in April gets maybe eight weeks before it's trying to survive 110°F on roots that are still sitting in the shape of the nursery pot.

Same plant, same yard, same crew. Different odds.

Season by season

SeasonGood time to plantLeave alone
Fall
Oct–Nov		 Trees, shrubs, perennials, cacti and succulents, wildflower seed, cool-season vegetables, spring bulbs Warm-season vegetables
Winter
Dec–Feb		 Bare-root fruit trees, roses, dormant-season pruning, hardscape and irrigation work Frost-tender plants, heavy pruning of frost-damaged growth
Spring
Mar–Apr		 Second-best window for shrubs and perennials, warm-season vegetables after mid-March, annual color Anything you can wait until fall to plant
Summer
May–Sep		 Very little. Keep what you have alive. Planting in general — new plants rarely establish in this heat

Vegetables

Cool-season crops

Lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, radishes, peas. University of Nevada Extension puts the southern Nevada planting window at August 10 through October 10. Fall is genuinely the better vegetable season here — cooler temperatures, fewer pests, and lower water demand than a spring planting fighting toward summer.

Warm-season crops

Tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons, beans. Set transplants out from about mid-February through March, once frost risk has passed, so they flower and set fruit before June. Tomatoes stop setting fruit once nights stay above roughly 75°F, so a late start means healthy plants and no tomatoes. A second window opens in late July and August for a fall crop.

Lawns

Bermuda

The standard warm-season grass here. It goes dormant and brown from around November through March — that's normal, not dead. It greens up when soil temperatures reach the mid-60s, usually April. The right time to lay Bermuda sod or seed is late spring into early summer, when it's actively growing. This is the one planting job that genuinely belongs in warm weather.

Fescue

Stays green all winter, but it's a cool-season grass in a desert and the water cost is hard to justify — both on your bill and against the valley's water rules.

Overseeding

Perennial ryegrass sown over dormant Bermuda in October keeps a lawn green through winter. It works, but it means watering an extra crop through the season when restrictions are tightest. Worth deciding on deliberately rather than by habit.

Before you buy anything: check the plant's mature size against the space you have, and check it against the water authority's plant list for the valley. The most common mistake we're called to fix is a tree planted four feet from a foundation that was always going to end up thirty feet wide.

A note on these dates

Treat every date here as a window, not a deadline. A warm October or a late frost shifts everything by a couple of weeks, and the west side of the valley runs colder than the middle — see our climate zone guide. Watch the weather, not the calendar.

Planning a yard this fall?

Fall books up fast here, for exactly the reasons above. If you're thinking about planting, it's worth getting on the schedule early.

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Sources — checked July 2026:

The Extension's Master Gardener help desk at the Springs Preserve answers plant questions in person and is free — worth knowing about if you garden here.