Frost timing

Frost dates estimated for your area, not just your zone

The loudest complaint about garden software is timing you can't trust. Zone 5 spans ten degrees of winter low and hundreds of miles, and when one planting comes in three weeks late, faith in the whole calendar goes with it. Harvestead does not ask you to guess.

A ZIP gives a broad local reading; sharing your location gives a reading closer to your garden. We’ll send you your number as your season shifts.

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The usual way

A zone table hands you one date for a band of country hundreds of miles wide, or a blank box you are expected to fill in from memory. Both are guesses, and both stay wrong all season.

The Harvestead way

Thirty years of gridded daily lows for your area, the safe date alongside the usual one, and a calendar that learns from the frosts you report. It is a planning estimate, not a sensor reading from your garden.

Your spot, not your zone

A ZIP code or one tap on your phone places your garden. From there we use 30 years of daily low temperatures for that area and account for elevation. A 2,000 ft difference across one county is a real difference in frost, and a zone map cannot see it.

The whole distribution, not an average

For every year we find the last spring freeze and the first fall freeze, then keep the spread. You get the usual date and the 1-in-10 late date side by side, because “when does frost usually end” and “when is it safe to set out tomatoes” are different questions. Planting on the median date fails half the time by definition.

Corrected by the frost you actually saw

Log the night your beans went black. As your own reports build up, your calendar shifts to match without letting one unusual night throw it off. This catches cold air at the bottom of a slope, a frost pocket, or a warm brick wall — details broad weather history cannot see.

Everything downstream moves with it

Sowing windows, transplant dates, succession plans, harvest projections, task reminders, and market pull lists all anchor to these two dates. Fix the frost dates and the entire season lines up behind them.

How honest we are about it

  • Every date shows its source and confidence. Rough, Solid, or Dialed in, with the reasoning printed underneath in plain language, so you are never asked to trust a number blind.
  • The weather history has limits and we say so. The finest reading covers roughly six miles, with a broader reading used where needed. Either way, it can smooth out frost pockets and cold-air drainage. Your own frost reports help close that gap.
  • It is a statistic, not a forecast. It tells you when frost is likely at your spot, not whether next Tuesday freezes. That is why the 1-in-10 late date sits next to the usual one instead of hiding behind it.
  • You can always take the wheel. Set your own dates and nothing ever recalculates over them. One button hands it back to the measured version.

Does it stay accurate?

The 30-year window rolls forward every year, and the last decade is compared against the long-run median so warming drift is planned on rather than frozen at a normal set in a colder era. Site records refresh yearly. Meanwhile every frost you report pulls the calendar closer to your own ground, so the dates get better each season you garden here instead of decaying.

See where every number comes from