USGrowersGuide
ES

Place guide

Planting zones in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL

This metro spans USDA zones 10a to 11a, so there is no single zone for Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL and anyone who gives you one is rounding. 65% of its ZIP codes are zone 10b; the rest are not.

USDA zones 10a–11a 3 zones across 34 ZIP codes
ZIP codes 34 34 have a NOAA station within range
Weather stations 4 NOAA 1991–2020 normals, across 781 sq mi

Your ZIP code

Get the exact answer for your address

Everything above describes Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL as a whole. Hardiness zones and freeze dates are published per ZIP code, so yours is exact — enter it and this page will tell you your zone, which NOAA station it comes from and how far away that station is.

Works for all 40,502 US ZIP codes. Freeze dates need a NOAA station within 100 km; where there is none, the page says so rather than estimating one.

What you can sow in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL now

14 of 32 crops that every one of the 4 NOAA stations serving this metro area agrees still has time to mature — with a week in hand, so this holds until the page is next rebuilt.

The freeze dates here cross the new year, so no single range describes them and none is quoted. Each ZIP code's own station is cited in the lookup above.

A further 1 crop depends on where in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL you are — its stations disagree about it. The ZIP lookup above settles it for one address.

The growing season at one or more of this metro area's stations crosses 1 January, so a one-year bar would have to start the season after it ended. No chart is drawn rather than a misleading one.

Which zone you are in depends where you are

Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL covers 3 hardiness zones. A guide that gives the metro one zone has picked whichever is largest and rounded everyone else into it — which is fine for the 65% in zone 10b and wrong for the other 35%. Here is the actual split.

Zone ZIP codes Share  
10b 22 65%
10a 11 32%
11a 1 3%

Zones are published per ZIP code, so yours is exact even though the metro's is not. The hardiness tool will tell you which one you are in.

Your freeze dates

No freeze range is shown for Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL, because the freeze window here crosses New Year, so an earliest-to-latest range would be arithmetic on dates that do not sit in order. The tools below still answer for individual ZIP codes here, and will say what applies.

Your growing season

NOAA publishes a growing-season length for each station, and across the 4 stations serving Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL it runs 339–365 days . That figure is published, not computed from the two freeze dates — subtracting one from the other gives the wrong answer wherever a season crosses New Year. Mean summer high (June–August) runs 91–94 °F , at or above the 90 °F point where cool-season crops bolt and tomato and pepper pollen fails — so midsummer sowings of lettuce and its relatives are worth holding here. Summer rain over the same months runs 27.3–29.5" across those 3 stations, against the rough inch a week — about 13 inches over the same 92 days — that a vegetable garden is usually reckoned to want. At the middle station that is covered, so watering in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL is for the gaps between storms rather than the whole season. The inches are NOAA's published normals; the inch a week is a rule of thumb, and it takes no account of a 92 °F summer afternoon drying the soil faster than a cool one.

What survives the winter changes across Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL

Of 74 perennial fruits, nuts, berries, vegetables and herbs, 25 come through the winter in zone 10a and only 18 in zone 11a. That is a different garden at each end of the same metro.

Zone ZIPs Survive Fail for being too warm
10a 11 25 of 74 49
10b 22 24 of 74 50
11a 1 18 of 74 56

The last column is the counterintuitive one, and it is why the totals do not simply rise as the winters get milder. Most temperate fruit needs a documented number of hours below about 45 °F to break dormancy and set a crop, so an apple fails in a winter that is too warm; currants and rhubarb cook in the summer heat that comes with it. See the full list with reasons.

At least one station here freezes across the new year, which puts the two ends of a spread on opposite sides of the calendar. Drawing it would produce a bar spanning almost the whole year and meaning nothing, so none is drawn.

The 4 stations behind these numbers

The 4 NOAA stations serving Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL A relative sketch of where the stations sit, about 42 kilometres north to south. Each is named with its NOAA identifier in the station list on this page, which carries the same information as text. FT MYERS PAGE FLD AP, FL US (USW00012835)FT MYERS SW FL RGNL AP, FL US (USW00012894)LA BELLE, FL US (USC00084662)PUNTA GORDA 4 ESE, FL US (USC00087397) ~42 km north to south

All 4 NOAA stations whose normals this page quotes, spanning about 42 km north to south. Every one is named with its identifier in the station list below — this page does not single one out, because no one station speaks for a whole metro area.

A relative sketch, not a map with a projection: longitude is adjusted for latitude so the shape is not stretched, and there is no basemap. For the one station nearest a specific address, with its real distance, use the ZIP lookup above.

Every figure above comes from these, and each is named so you can check it. Which station serves a given ZIP code, and how far away it is, varies across the metro — the table below gives it per ZIP code rather than this page averaging it.

Station NOAA ID Last spring freeze First fall freeze Season
Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL USW00012835 January 16 January 13 365 days
Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL USW00012894 January 17 January 16 365 days
La Belle, FL USC00084662 February 2 January 8 339 days
Punta Gorda 4 Ese, FL USC00087397 January 21 January 14 365 days

These are medians, not averages — NOAA publishes freeze dates as a probability distribution, and half of years freeze later than the date shown.

Every ZIP code in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL

Zones are published per ZIP code, not per metro area, so this is the exact answer rather than the metro area's average. The station column is the nearest one to that ZIP code's centroid and how far away it is — the same figure the tools use, shown here so you can see which ZIP codes are well covered and which are reaching.

ZIP code USDA zone Nearest NOAA station Distance
33901 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 4.8 km
33903 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 11.7 km
33904 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 8.4 km
33905 10a Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 13.4 km
33907 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 2.5 km
33908 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 14.4 km
33909 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 18.3 km
33912 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 6.6 km
33913 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 6.3 km
33914 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 16.4 km
33916 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 6.4 km
33917 10a Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 18.2 km
33919 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 5.2 km
33920 10a La Belle, FL 20.8 km
33921 10b Punta Gorda 4 Ese, FL 29.9 km
33922 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 32.2 km
33924 11a Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 33.4 km
33928 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 12.6 km
33931 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 18.0 km
33956 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 26.4 km
33957 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 27.5 km
33965 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 7.7 km
33966 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 2.7 km
33967 10b Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 9.2 km
33971 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 12.7 km
33972 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 18.6 km
33973 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 7.6 km
33974 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 15.5 km
33976 10a Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 9.2 km
33990 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 9.9 km
33991 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 15.7 km
33993 10b Ft Myers Page FLD AP, FL 21.2 km
34134 10b Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 20.9 km
34135 10b Ft Myers SW Fl Rgnl AP, FL 18.8 km

ZIP-code positions are area centroids, so a large rural ZIP code's listed distance is measured from the middle of its area rather than from any particular address in it.

Your own ZIP

Work out your own dates

Each of these takes a ZIP code and answers for that ZIP alone, citing the station it used and how far away it is. There is a ZIP box in the header of every page.

Other places to compare

These metros span exactly the same zones — 10a–11a — so the same plants are in and out of range across them. The freeze dates and the spring calendar are their own.

Gardening in Florida — zones 8b– 11b covers the whole state: how its 1,008 ZIP codes divide between 7 hardiness zones, and the freeze dates across every NOAA station in it.

Other metro areas in FL:

All 388 metro areas, by state

Gear

If you want to act on this

Each link opens an Amazon search rather than a product we picked. We have not tested these and do not rank them — the search is the honest version, and you choose.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. That costs you nothing extra, and it buys no influence over anything on this site: the dates come from NOAA normals and the zones from the USDA, and no product affects either.

Sources

Where these numbers come from

The hardiness zone is the USDA 2023 Plant Hardiness Zone Map, published per ZIP code by PRISM at Oregon State. The freeze dates are NOAA's 1991–2020 Climate Normals, read from every station whose normals cover a ZIP code in this metro. Nothing here is estimated, and no station stands in for another.

This page names no single station on purpose. Picking one to represent a metro sounds reasonable and is not: the station serving the most ZIP codes is an artifact of where ZIP centroids happen to fall, and it selects a lock on the Monongahela for Pittsburgh and a far southern suburb for Chicago. A range across every station is true; a single cited date for a whole metro is not.

All metro areas