Your last frost date, hardiness zone, growing-season length, and a planting calendar built for your ZIP code — when to start seeds, set out transplants, direct-sow and harvest. Free, private, and it runs entirely in your browser.
Private. Runs entirely on your device.
Gardening is mostly about timing, and timing is mostly about frost. Type your ZIP above and The Garden Almanac will find your USDA hardiness zone and your average last and first frost dates from the nearest NOAA weather station, then build a planting calendar that tells you exactly when to start each crop where you live.
Enter your ZIP above to see the next two weeks of overnight lows and which nights threaten frost.
Detailed growing notes for every crop — varieties, spacing, depth, companions, common problems and harvest cues. Enter your ZIP and each card also shows your planting dates.
Frost dates & growing season come from NOAA's U.S. Climate Normals (1991–2020) freeze/frost product. We find the nearest of ~1,100 first-order weather stations to your ZIP and report its average last-spring and first-fall 32°F freeze dates, plus the early/late range (the 10th and 90th percentiles). These are historical probabilities, not a forecast — your own yard, especially a low frost pocket or a sheltered city lot, can run several degrees different.
Hardiness zone is from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Planting dates are computed from your frost dates using standard extension-service timing for each crop. Frost Watch pulls live overnight lows from Open-Meteo.
🔒 Your privacy: your zone, frost dates and planting calendar are computed on your device from bundled data. The only thing that ever leaves your browser is your ZIP/coordinates, sent to look up your location and (on Frost Watch) the live forecast. No account, no ads, nothing stored on a server.
The Garden Almanac is general growing guidance, not a guarantee. Frost dates are averages and microclimates vary — when a tender plant's life is on the line, watch the actual forecast and give yourself a safety margin. We're not liable for crop loss; your garden is always the final authority.
This one grew out of years of digging in the dirt here in Wisconsin. A few posts from my own garden: