🌦️ Seasons for Kids

Most of America has four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, each with its own weather and its own garden rules. Florida looked at that system and said: no thanks, we'll have two. Wet and dry. Rainy summer and sunny winter. And that one change flips the whole gardening calendar upside down — in the best way.

Birch trees in autumn color. Photo: Dmitry Makeev, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

An apple tree in blossom in spring. Photo: Mjeltsch, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

New snow on birch crowns in winter. Photo: W.carter, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

🌦️ Florida's Two Seasons

🌧️ Wet Season (roughly May to October) — The Rainy Summer

Summer in Florida means afternoon thunderstorms — big, loud, daily clouds that build up in the heat and burst in the afternoon. It rains a lot, it is hot and humid, and everything grows fast: grass, weeds, bugs, and tropical plants that love heat. Summer is also when gardens struggle with the heat: tomatoes, which love warm weather, actually give up in Florida's deep summer heat — they drop their flowers and stop making fruit. Too hot even for tomatoes. That is a Florida sentence if there ever was one.

☀️ Dry Season (roughly November to April) — The Sunny Winter

Winter in Florida means dry, sunny, cooler days — and the best gardening weather of the year. While the rest of the country is frozen, Florida gardens are going: this is when you plant tomatoes (fall and early spring beat summer heat, the pizza garden's rule), greens, and root veggies. Winter is Florida's spring. If your cousins up north are shoveling snow, you are picking lettuce. That is the Florida flip, and it is the whole reason this site's planting advice looks backwards to everyone else: it is not backwards. It is Florida.

Fun fact: Florida is a long, skinny peninsula with ocean on three sides, close to the equator. That geography is why winters stay mild: the ocean holds warmth, and cold air has to travel a long way over warm water to get here. By the time winter arrives in Florida, it has lost most of its punch.

🌦️ Tap a Season

Two seasons, plus the two things every Florida kid should know. Tap one.

Tap a season above!

What it brings and one wild fact will show up here.

⛈️ Storm Season (June to November)

Summer and fall also bring hurricane season — June through November — when big storms can form over the warm ocean. Most years Florida gets watches and warnings and a lot of rain; some years a real hurricane comes. Grown-ups handle hurricane prep (shutters, supplies, plans), and kids handle the kid job: knowing the plan, staying calm, and never going outside during a storm. Storms are weather, not adventures — the adventure is being ready.

🌱 Why the Calendar Flips

Here is the whole idea in one line: in most of America, you plant in spring because winter is too cold. In Florida, you plant in fall because summer is too hot. Same logic, flipped seasons. Tomatoes in fall. Greens in winter. Heat-lovers like okra and sweet potatoes in summer. The garden doesn't care what the calendar says. It cares about temperature and rain — and Florida's temperature and rain run on their own schedule.

Watch your yard through a whole year and you will see it: summer thunderstorms building every afternoon, winter mornings cool enough for a jacket, tomatoes happiest when the calendar says "fall," and the whole neighborhood planting when the rest of the country is putting gardens to bed. Two seasons. One flip. All Florida.

🧪 Science note: Seasons happen because Earth tilts on its axis as it orbits the sun — the tilt points your part of the planet toward the sun in summer and away in winter. Florida tilts too, but being close to the equator means the tilt changes things less here: winters stay mild because the sun never gets that low in the sky. Same tilt, gentler effect, thanks to latitude.

🧑 Grown-ups: Lightning safety is the lesson: Florida is the lightning capital of the country, and the rule is absolute — if you hear thunder, go inside, and stay inside until 30 minutes after the last thunder. No "one more throw," no sheltering under trees (trees attract lightning), no swimming or bathing during storms. Make the rule boring and automatic: thunder means inside, every time, no arguments.

So when someone from up north asks why you are planting tomatoes in October, you know the answer: because in Florida, fall is spring. Two seasons, one flip, and a garden that grows while the rest of the country freezes. Welcome to Florida gardening.