Place guide
Planting zones 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.
Your ZIP code
Get the exact answer for your address
Everything above describes Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 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.
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA does not have one planting answer
Its own weather stations disagree about 32 of the 32 crops in this table right now, so any single list would be wrong for part of the metro area. That is not a gap in the data — it is what the data says.
- Shortest season
- 131 days
BIG BEAR LAKE, CA US (USC00040741) - Longest season
- 365 days
RIVERSIDE CITRUS EXP, CA US (USC00047473)
234 days of growing season separate those two stations, and both serve ZIP codes in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA. The ZIP lookup above answers for one address instead of averaging a place that has no average.
Why the hardiness zone does not settle this
A USDA zone is a winter-minimum statistic. It was never a growing-season one, and it does not behave like one: within a single zone the growing season runs a median 54 days wider at the 10th–90th percentile, and annual growing degree days vary by 2.02×.
The zones also overlap rather than stack — 30% of zone 6b freezes before the median zone 6a station. The zone tells you what survives your winter; the station tells you what finishes before your autumn.
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
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. Summer rain over the same months runs 0.1–1.7" across those 40 stations, against the rough inch a week — about 13 inches over the same 92 days — that a vegetable garden is usually reckoned to want. The middle station covers about 3% of it, so a summer garden here is watered rather than rained on. The inches are NOAA's published normals; the inch a week is a rule of thumb, and it takes no account of a 95 °F summer afternoon drying the soil faster than a cool one.
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.
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 41 stations behind these numbers
All 41 NOAA stations whose normals this page quotes, spanning about 265 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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.
Every ZIP code in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 91701 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 9.1 km |
| 91708 | 9b | Chino AP, CA | 2.6 km |
| 91709 | 10a | Chino AP, CA | 9.0 km |
| 91710 | 10a | Chino AP, CA | 5.4 km |
| 91730 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 5.2 km |
| 91737 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 11.2 km |
| 91739 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 13.5 km |
| 91752 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 9.2 km |
| 91761 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 2.4 km |
| 91762 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 6.4 km |
| 91763 | 10a | Pomona/Fairplex, CA | 6.3 km |
| 91764 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 2.1 km |
| 91784 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 10.7 km |
| 91786 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 7.9 km |
| 92201 | 10a | Indio Fire Stn, CA | 2.0 km |
| 92203 | 10a | Indio Fire Stn, CA | 5.4 km |
| 92210 | 10a | Indio Fire Stn, CA | 10.6 km |
| 92211 | 10a | Indio Fire Stn, CA | 12.7 km |
| 92220 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 20.3 km |
| 92223 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 15.7 km |
| 92225 | 9b | Blythe AP, CA | 12.1 km |
| 92230 | 9b | Idyllwild Fire Dept, CA | 17.8 km |
| 92234 | 10a | Palm Springs Rgnl AP, CA | 4.0 km |
| 92236 | 10a | Desert Resorts Rgnl AP, CA | 11.7 km |
| 92239 | 10a | Eagle Mtn, CA | 22.1 km |
| 92240 | 10a | Palm Springs Rgnl AP, CA | 13.8 km |
| 92241 | 10a | Indio Fire Stn, CA | 16.6 km |
| 92242 | 9b | Parker, AZ | 4.1 km |
| 92252 | 9a | Joshua Tree, CA | 0.9 km |
| 92253 | 10a | Indio Fire Stn, CA | 9.2 km |
| 92254 | 10a | Mecca Fire Stn, CA | 7.5 km |
| 92256 | 9b | Morongo Valley N, CA | 5.4 km |
| 92258 | 10a | Palm Springs, CA | 11.4 km |
| 92260 | 10a | Palm Springs Rgnl AP, CA | 17.2 km |
| 92262 | 10a | Palm Springs, CA | 5.9 km |
| 92264 | 10a | Palm Springs, CA | 12.8 km |
| 92267 | 10a | Parker Resrvoir, CA | 3.4 km |
| 92268 | 9a | Morongo Valley N, CA | 8.4 km |
| 92270 | 10a | Palm Springs Rgnl AP, CA | 9.9 km |
| 92274 | 10a | Mecca Fire Stn, CA | 11.7 km |
| 92276 | 10a | Palm Springs Rgnl AP, CA | 11.0 km |
| 92277 | 9b | Twentynine Palms, CA | 31.9 km |
| 92278 | 9b | Twentynine Palms, CA | 12.1 km |
| 92280 | 9b | Iron Mtn, CA | 12.7 km |
| 92282 | 9b | Morongo Valley N, CA | 16.4 km |
| 92284 | 9a | Yucca Valley, CA | 4.8 km |
| 92285 | 9a | Johnson Valley, CA | 3.3 km |
| 92301 | 8b | El Mirage, CA | 11.8 km |
| 92304 | 9b | Mitchell Caverns, CA | 45.8 km |
| 92305 | 7a | Big Bear Lake, CA | 11.9 km |
| 92307 | 8b | Victorville, CA | 15.4 km |
| 92308 | 8b | Hesperia 2E, CA | 10.1 km |
| 92309 | 9a | Baker, CA | 9.0 km |
| 92310 | 9a | Barstow Daggett AP, CA | 53.5 km |
| 92311 | 9a | Barstow, CA | 8.3 km |
| 92313 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 8.3 km |
| 92314 | 7a | Big Bear Lake, CA | 11.1 km |
| 92315 | 7b | Big Bear Lake, CA | 3.7 km |
| 92316 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 10.4 km |
| 92317 | 8a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 1.9 km |
| 92320 | 9b | Redlands, CA | 14.4 km |
| 92321 | 8a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 3.8 km |
| 92322 | 8b | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 12.4 km |
| 92324 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 8.8 km |
| 92325 | 8b | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 8.1 km |
| 92327 | 9a | Barstow Daggett AP, CA | 4.8 km |
| 92332 | 9a | Mitchell Caverns, CA | 17.1 km |
| 92333 | 7a | Big Bear Lake, CA | 6.3 km |
| 92335 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 12.9 km |
| 92336 | 10a | Ontario INTL AP, CA | 15.7 km |
| 92337 | 10a | Riverside Muni AP, CA | 11.3 km |
| 92338 | 9a | Barstow Daggett AP, CA | 49.3 km |
| 92339 | 7b | Big Bear Lake, CA | 19.2 km |
| 92341 | 7b | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 11.6 km |
| 92342 | 8b | Victorville, CA | 26.0 km |
| 92344 | 8b | Hesperia 2E, CA | 13.3 km |
| 92345 | 8b | Hesperia 2E, CA | 7.9 km |
| 92346 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 9.8 km |
| 92347 | 9a | Barstow, CA | 22.5 km |
| 92352 | 8b | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 2.3 km |
| 92354 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 5.3 km |
| 92356 | 8b | Big Bear Lake, CA | 28.2 km |
| 92358 | 8a | Wrightwood, CA | 14.4 km |
| 92359 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 12.2 km |
| 92363 | 10a | Needles AP, CA | 7.1 km |
| 92364 | 8b | Mitchell Caverns, CA | 47.3 km |
| 92365 | 9a | Barstow Daggett AP, CA | 21.1 km |
| 92368 | 8b | Victorville, CA | 15.2 km |
| 92369 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 11.6 km |
| 92371 | 8b | Wrightwood, CA | 12.3 km |
| 92372 | 8b | Wrightwood, CA | 9.7 km |
| 92373 | 9b | Redlands, CA | 4.3 km |
| 92374 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 3.9 km |
| 92376 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 16.1 km |
| 92377 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 21.0 km |
| 92378 | 8a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 3.7 km |
| 92382 | 8a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 8.3 km |
| 92385 | 8a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 5.4 km |
| 92386 | 7a | Big Bear Lake, CA | 8.4 km |
| 92391 | 8a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 4.5 km |
| 92392 | 8b | Victorville, CA | 12.0 km |
| 92394 | 8b | Victorville, CA | 6.7 km |
| 92395 | 8b | Victorville, CA | 2.8 km |
| 92398 | 9a | Barstow Daggett AP, CA | 15.6 km |
| 92399 | 9b | Redlands, CA | 17.0 km |
| 92401 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 11.8 km |
| 92404 | 10a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 8.9 km |
| 92405 | 10a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 15.4 km |
| 92407 | 10a | Lake Arrowhead, CA | 18.6 km |
| 92408 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 8.6 km |
| 92410 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 10.5 km |
| 92411 | 10a | Redlands, CA | 15.4 km |
| 92501 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 3.5 km |
| 92503 | 10a | Riverside Muni AP, CA | 7.8 km |
| 92504 | 10a | Riverside Fire Stn 3, CA | 4.9 km |
| 92505 | 10a | Riverside Muni AP, CA | 5.7 km |
| 92506 | 10a | Riverside Fire Stn 3, CA | 2.7 km |
| 92507 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 5.7 km |
| 92508 | 9b | Riverside Fire Stn 3, CA | 8.7 km |
| 92509 | 10a | Riverside Muni AP, CA | 5.7 km |
| 92518 | 9b | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 11.1 km |
| 92521 | 10a | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 3.2 km |
| 92530 | 10a | Elsinore, CA | 6.3 km |
| 92532 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 4.0 km |
| 92536 | 9b | Palomar Mtn Obsy, CA | 12.8 km |
| 92539 | 8b | Palomar Mtn Obsy, CA | 24.4 km |
| 92543 | 9b | Hemet, CA | 9.0 km |
| 92544 | 9b | Hemet, CA | 10.3 km |
| 92545 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 9.2 km |
| 92548 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 12.9 km |
| 92549 | 8a | Idyllwild Fire Dept, CA | 5.8 km |
| 92551 | 9b | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 15.7 km |
| 92553 | 9b | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 11.8 km |
| 92555 | 9b | Redlands, CA | 15.9 km |
| 92557 | 9b | Redlands, CA | 9.2 km |
| 92561 | 8b | Idyllwild Fire Dept, CA | 18.2 km |
| 92562 | 10a | Elsinore, CA | 17.2 km |
| 92563 | 9b | Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | 16.2 km |
| 92567 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 10.6 km |
| 92570 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 10.7 km |
| 92571 | 9b | Riverside Citrus Exp, CA | 20.7 km |
| 92582 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 3.9 km |
| 92583 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 4.1 km |
| 92584 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 15.4 km |
| 92585 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 17.7 km |
| 92586 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 13.7 km |
| 92587 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 8.9 km |
| 92590 | 10b | Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | 5.9 km |
| 92591 | 9b | Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | 13.0 km |
| 92592 | 9b | Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | 17.6 km |
| 92595 | 9b | Elsinore, CA | 11.1 km |
| 92596 | 9b | San Jacinto, CA | 15.7 km |
| 92860 | 10a | Chino AP, CA | 9.9 km |
| 92879 | 10a | Riverside Muni AP, CA | 11.3 km |
| 92880 | 10a | Chino AP, CA | 6.2 km |
| 92881 | 10a | Chino AP, CA | 17.9 km |
| 92882 | 10a | Chino AP, CA | 12.9 km |
| 92883 | 10a | Elsinore, CA | 14.8 km |
| 93558 | 9a | Randsburg, CA | 6.9 km |
| 93562 | 9a | Trona, CA | 10.2 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.
-
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.
Other places to compare
Gardening in California — zones 5b– 11a covers the whole state: how its 1,788 ZIP codes divide between 12 hardiness zones, and the freeze dates across every NOAA station in it.
Other metro areas in CA:
- Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA Zones 6b–9b
- San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA Zones 8a–11a
- Fresno, CA Zones 5b, 7b, 8a, 8b, 9a, 9b
- San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Zones 9a–10a
- Bakersfield-Delano, CA Zones 8a–9b
- Visalia, CA Zones 6b, 7b, 8b, 9a, 9b
- Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA Zones 9a–10a
- Salinas, CA Zones 8b–10b
- Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Zones 7b, 8b, 9b, 10a, 10b
- Stockton-Lodi, CA Zone 9b
- Modesto, CA Zone 9b
- Redding, CA Zones 7a, 7b, 8b, 9a, 9b
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.
- Shade clothSummer highs here average 95 °F, at or above the 90 °F point where lettuce and spinach bolt and tomato pollen fails.
- Soaker hose and drip kitsThe stations here publish no ordinary freeze window, so frost is not what limits the season — water is, through a summer that does not stop.
- MulchFor the perennials nearest their cold limit in zone 7a, where an insulated crown is what decides whether they come back.
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.