About hortyard

hortyard is a free site for home gardeners in the United States. It answers the questions that depend on where you live: when your last spring frost usually comes, when the first fall frost arrives, which growing zone you are in, and when to start, plant, harvest or prune each crop. It also has calculators for the yard: how many bags of mulch, how much soil for a raised bed, how much compost or pine straw.

Most garden calendars give one chart for a whole zone or a whole state. Frost dates can differ by two weeks or more between towns in the same zone, so we work everything out from the weather station nearest you and show you which station it is.

How the pages are made

Frost dates and winter lows come from NOAA's public climate records for 1991 to 2020. Town and postal code locations come from the U.S. Census Bureau. Planting, harvest and pruning times come from guides published by university extension services; we take only the facts and figures, check each one against at least two of those guides, write the pages in our own words and link the guides on every page. The method page explains each calculation and the sources page lists every data set and its license.

We do not give advice on pesticides, plant diseases or which plants are safe to eat. For those questions your county extension office is the right place to ask.

Who runs the site

hortyard is an independent project, not affiliated with any government agency or university, run by a small team that builds free reference websites. We do not collect personal data through forms or accounts. A town you search for is remembered only on your own device.

Found a mistake?

If a date, figure or instruction looks wrong for your area, email [email protected] with the page address and what you noticed. We read every message and fix confirmed errors.