Gardening in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
This metro spans USDA zones 7a to 10b, so there is no single zone for Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA and anyone who gives you one is rounding. 43% of its ZIP codes are zone 10a; the rest are not.
Which zone you are in depends where you are
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA covers 8 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 43% in zone 10a and wrong for the other 57%. Here is the actual split.
| Zone | ZIP codes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10a | 69 | 43% | |
| 9b | 41 | 26% | |
| 8b | 19 | 12% | |
| 9a | 15 | 9% | |
| 8a | 8 | 5% | |
| 7a | 4 | 3% | |
| 7b | 3 | 2% | |
| 10b | 1 | 1% |
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 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA, 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 41 stations serving Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA it runs 131–365 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 78–109 °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.
What survives the winter changes across Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
Of 74 perennial fruits, nuts, berries, vegetables and herbs, 58 come through the winter in zone 7a and only 24 in zone 10b. That is a different garden at each end of the same metro.
| Zone | ZIPs | Survive | Fail for being too warm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7a | 4 | 58 of 74 | 1 |
| 7b | 3 | 56 of 74 | 3 |
| 8a | 8 | 57 of 74 | 8 |
| 8b | 19 | 54 of 74 | 11 |
| 9a | 15 | 46 of 74 | 25 |
| 9b | 41 | 40 of 74 | 32 |
| 10a | 69 | 25 of 74 | 49 |
| 10b | 1 | 24 of 74 | 50 |
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.
The 41 stations behind these numbers
Every figure above comes from these, and each is named so you can check it. Distances vary by ZIP code, so the tools report yours rather than this page guessing.
| Station | NOAA ID | Last spring freeze | First fall freeze | Season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baker, CA | USC00040436 | February 14 | November 27 | 287 days |
| Barstow Daggett AP, CA | USW00023161 | February 19 | November 26 | 279 days |
| Barstow, CA | USC00040521 | February 22 | November 23 | 271 days |
| Big Bear Lake, CA | USC00040741 | May 27 | October 4 | 131 days |
| Blythe AP, CA | USW00023158 | January 5 | December 21 | 347 days |
| Chino AP, CA | USW00003179 | January 17 | December 19 | 335 days |
| Desert Resorts Rgnl AP, CA | USW00003104 | February 7 | December 2 | 298 days |
| Eagle Mtn, CA | USC00042598 | January 10 | January 8 | 365 days |
| El Mirage, CA | USC00042771 | March 21 | November 12 | 235 days |
| Elsinore, CA | USC00042805 | January 28 | December 18 | 329 days |
| Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | USW00053151 | February 2 | January 30 | 365 days |
| Hemet, CA | USC00043896 | January 10 | December 23 | 350 days |
| Hesperia 2E, CA | USC00043937 | February 28 | December 1 | 270 days |
| Idyllwild Fire Dept, CA | USC00044211 | May 16 | October 24 | 160 days |
| Indio Fire Stn, CA | USC00044259 | December 31 | December 27 | 365 days |
| Iron Mtn, CA | USC00044297 | January 3 | December 31 | 365 days |
| Johnson Valley, CA | USC00044394 | March 1 | November 29 | 271 days |
| Joshua Tree, CA | USC00044405 | February 28 | December 1 | 273 days |
| Lake Arrowhead, CA | USC00044671 | May 5 | November 2 | 176 days |
| Mecca Fire Stn, CA | USC00045502 | January 6 | December 22 | 352 days |
| Mitchell Caverns, CA | USC00045721 | March 6 | December 8 | 272 days |
| Morongo Valley N, CA | USC00045860 | February 25 | December 15 | 297 days |
| Needles AP, CA | USW00023179 | January 6 | January 2 | 365 days |
| Ontario INTL AP, CA | USW00003102 | January 4 | December 30 | 365 days |
| Palm Springs Rgnl AP, CA | USW00093138 | January 9 | January 9 | 365 days |
| Palm Springs, CA | USC00046635 | January 1 | December 31 | 365 days |
| Palomar Mtn Obsy, CA | USC00046657 | April 29 | November 18 | 201 days |
| Parker Resrvoir, CA | USC00046699 | January 7 | December 31 | 365 days |
| Parker, AZ | USC00026250 | January 12 | December 19 | 338 days |
| Pomona/Fairplex, CA | USC00047050 | January 8 | December 28 | 354 days |
| Randsburg, CA | USC00047253 | March 19 | November 25 | 251 days |
| Redlands, CA | USC00047306 | January 27 | December 19 | 329 days |
| Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | USC00047473 | January 10 | January 2 | 365 days |
| Riverside Fire Stn 3, CA | USC00047470 | January 9 | December 25 | 353 days |
| Riverside Muni AP, CA | USW00003171 | January 9 | December 30 | 362 days |
| San Jacinto, CA | USC00047813 | January 31 | December 10 | 315 days |
| Trona, CA | USC00049035 | February 15 | November 28 | 285 days |
| Twentynine Palms, CA | USC00049099 | January 24 | December 10 | 321 days |
| Victorville, CA | USC00049325 | March 18 | November 11 | 233 days |
| Wrightwood, CA | USC00049822 | May 16 | October 13 | 151 days |
| Yucca Valley, CA | USC00049888 | March 14 | November 28 | 255 days |
These are medians, not averages — NOAA publishes freeze dates as a probability distribution, and half of years freeze later than the date shown.
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.
- What survives my winter?
Runs on the hardiness zone, so it answers for all of Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA at once — zone across 74 perennial fruits, berries, vegetables and herbs.
- When do I start my seeds?
Dates every spring job from your own last freeze — sow indoors, set out, direct sow.
- When do I sow the next round?
How often each crop is worth re-sowing, and when the next sowing is due.
- What can I still plant?
Counts the growing days left before your first fall freeze, crop by crop.
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.