Place guide
Planting zones in San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
This metro spans USDA zones 8a to 11a, so there is no single zone for San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA and anyone who gives you one is rounding. 50% of its ZIP codes are zone 10b; the rest are not.
Your ZIP code
Get the exact answer for your address
Everything above describes San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, 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.
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, 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
- 174 days
CAMPO, CA US (USC00041424) - Longest season
- 365 days
VISTA, CA US (USC00049378)
191 days of growing season separate those two stations, and both serve ZIP codes in San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, 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
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA covers 7 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 50% in zone 10b and wrong for the other 50%. Here is the actual split.
| Zone | ZIP codes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10b | 57 | 50% | |
| 10a | 33 | 29% | |
| 9b | 9 | 8% | |
| 9a | 6 | 5% | |
| 11a | 5 | 4% | |
| 8b | 3 | 3% | |
| 8a | 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 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA, because at least one station here records no freeze at any probability, so there is no date to average. 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 29 stations serving San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA it runs 174–365 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 71–106 °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 0.1–1.3" across those 28 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 2% 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 81 °F summer afternoon drying the soil faster than a cool one.
What survives the winter changes across San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
Of 74 perennial fruits, nuts, berries, vegetables and herbs, 57 come through the winter in zone 8a 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8a | 1 | 57 of 74 | 8 |
| 8b | 3 | 54 of 74 | 11 |
| 9a | 6 | 46 of 74 | 25 |
| 9b | 9 | 40 of 74 | 32 |
| 10a | 33 | 25 of 74 | 49 |
| 10b | 57 | 24 of 74 | 50 |
| 11a | 5 | 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 29 stations behind these numbers
All 29 NOAA stations whose normals this page quotes, spanning about 97 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine, CA | USC00040136 | February 12 | December 24 | 317 days |
| Borrego Desert Park, CA | USC00040983 | January 10 | January 1 | 365 days |
| Camp Pendleton Mcas, CA | USW00003154 | February 16 | December 8 | 298 days |
| Campo Asos, CA | USW00003164 | April 29 | November 1 | 184 days |
| Campo, CA | USC00041424 | April 30 | October 26 | 174 days |
| Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | USW00003177 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Chula Vista, CA | USC00041758 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Cuyamaca, CA | USC00042239 | April 19 | October 27 | 190 days |
| El Cajon, CA | USC00042706 | January 6 | December 21 | 350 days |
| El Capitan Dam, CA | USC00042709 | March 19 | December 8 | 270 days |
| Escondido #2, CA | USC00042863 | January 2 | December 30 | 365 days |
| Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | USW00053151 | February 2 | January 30 | 365 days |
| Henshaw Dam, CA | USC00043914 | April 18 | October 26 | 189 days |
| Imperial Beach Ream FLD Nas, CA | USW00093115 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Mt Laguna #3, CA | USC00045968 | April 22 | November 8 | 197 days |
| North Island Nas, CA | USW00093112 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Oceanside Muni AP, CA | USW00053121 | January 23 | December 11 | 325 days |
| Ocotillo Wells 2W, CA | USC00046386 | January 7 | January 4 | 365 days |
| Palomar Mtn Obsy, CA | USC00046657 | April 29 | November 18 | 201 days |
| Ramona Fire Dept, CA | USC00047228 | March 4 | December 4 | 270 days |
| Rancho Bernardo, CA | USC00047248 | January 5 | January 2 | 365 days |
| San Diego Brown FLD, CA | USW00003178 | January 6 | December 31 | 365 days |
| San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | USW00023188 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | USW00093107 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | USW00003131 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| San Diego Seaworld, CA | USC00047741 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| San Pasqual Animal Pk, CA | USC00047874 | February 2 | December 7 | 309 days |
| Valley Ctr 1N, CA | USC00049226 | February 19 | December 1 | 281 days |
| Vista, CA | USC00049378 | January 30 | January 7 | 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 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 91901 | 9b | Alpine, CA | 5.3 km |
| 91902 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 8.3 km |
| 91905 | 9a | Campo Asos, CA | 16.1 km |
| 91906 | 9a | Campo, CA | 3.6 km |
| 91910 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 2.3 km |
| 91911 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 4.9 km |
| 91913 | 10b | San Diego Brown FLD, CA | 5.7 km |
| 91914 | 10b | San Diego Brown FLD, CA | 10.7 km |
| 91915 | 10b | San Diego Brown FLD, CA | 6.4 km |
| 91916 | 9b | Cuyamaca, CA | 9.7 km |
| 91917 | 10a | Alpine, CA | 21.7 km |
| 91931 | 8b | Mt Laguna #3, CA | 15.4 km |
| 91932 | 10b | Imperial Beach Ream FLD Nas, CA | 0.2 km |
| 91934 | 9b | Campo Asos, CA | 29.7 km |
| 91935 | 10a | Alpine, CA | 15.7 km |
| 91941 | 10b | El Cajon, CA | 7.9 km |
| 91942 | 10b | El Cajon, CA | 9.1 km |
| 91945 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 11.4 km |
| 91948 | 8a | Mt Laguna #3, CA | 5.0 km |
| 91950 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 3.3 km |
| 91962 | 8b | Mt Laguna #3, CA | 9.6 km |
| 91963 | 9a | Campo, CA | 12.1 km |
| 91977 | 10b | El Cajon, CA | 10.3 km |
| 91978 | 10b | El Cajon, CA | 11.3 km |
| 91980 | 9b | Campo, CA | 15.9 km |
| 92003 | 10a | Vista, CA | 6.4 km |
| 92004 | 10a | Ocotillo Wells 2W, CA | 4.7 km |
| 92007 | 10b | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 11.7 km |
| 92008 | 10a | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 3.6 km |
| 92009 | 10a | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 4.8 km |
| 92010 | 10a | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 4.1 km |
| 92011 | 10b | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 2.8 km |
| 92014 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 15.3 km |
| 92019 | 10b | El Cajon, CA | 5.8 km |
| 92020 | 10a | El Cajon, CA | 3.9 km |
| 92021 | 10a | El Cajon, CA | 6.3 km |
| 92024 | 10a | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 8.2 km |
| 92025 | 10a | San Pasqual Animal Pk, CA | 3.9 km |
| 92026 | 10a | Valley Ctr 1N, CA | 8.2 km |
| 92027 | 9b | San Pasqual Animal Pk, CA | 4.4 km |
| 92028 | 10a | Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | 6.7 km |
| 92029 | 10a | Escondido #2, CA | 5.1 km |
| 92036 | 9b | Ocotillo Wells 2W, CA | 16.3 km |
| 92037 | 10b | San Diego Seaworld, CA | 10.1 km |
| 92040 | 10a | El Capitan Dam, CA | 7.6 km |
| 92054 | 10a | Oceanside Muni AP, CA | 3.1 km |
| 92055 | 10b | Camp Pendleton Mcas, CA | 14.6 km |
| 92056 | 10a | Oceanside Muni AP, CA | 5.2 km |
| 92057 | 10a | Vista, CA | 5.2 km |
| 92058 | 10a | Camp Pendleton Mcas, CA | 4.0 km |
| 92059 | 10a | Fallbrook 5 NE, CA | 14.3 km |
| 92060 | 9a | Palomar Mtn Obsy, CA | 3.8 km |
| 92061 | 9b | Palomar Mtn Obsy, CA | 12.1 km |
| 92064 | 10a | Rancho Bernardo, CA | 7.6 km |
| 92065 | 9b | Ramona Fire Dept, CA | 8.0 km |
| 92066 | 9a | Borrego Desert Park, CA | 13.1 km |
| 92067 | 10a | Rancho Bernardo, CA | 10.2 km |
| 92069 | 10a | Escondido #2, CA | 8.7 km |
| 92070 | 9a | Henshaw Dam, CA | 5.7 km |
| 92071 | 10a | El Cajon, CA | 8.4 km |
| 92075 | 10b | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 14.7 km |
| 92078 | 10a | Escondido #2, CA | 8.5 km |
| 92081 | 10a | Carlsbad Palomar AP, CA | 5.4 km |
| 92082 | 9b | Valley Ctr 1N, CA | 4.7 km |
| 92083 | 10a | Vista, CA | 4.4 km |
| 92084 | 10a | Vista, CA | 3.1 km |
| 92086 | 8b | Henshaw Dam, CA | 14.9 km |
| 92091 | 10a | Rancho Bernardo, CA | 10.1 km |
| 92092 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 9.7 km |
| 92093 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 9.8 km |
| 92096 | 10a | Escondido #2, CA | 6.2 km |
| 92101 | 11a | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 2.0 km |
| 92102 | 10b | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 6.4 km |
| 92103 | 10b | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 2.2 km |
| 92104 | 10b | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 5.3 km |
| 92105 | 10b | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 8.8 km |
| 92106 | 10b | North Island Nas, CA | 3.7 km |
| 92107 | 10b | San Diego Seaworld, CA | 3.2 km |
| 92108 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 4.7 km |
| 92109 | 10b | San Diego Seaworld, CA | 2.4 km |
| 92110 | 10b | San Diego Seaworld, CA | 2.9 km |
| 92111 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 3.0 km |
| 92113 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 6.9 km |
| 92114 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 8.1 km |
| 92115 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 8.7 km |
| 92116 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 5.9 km |
| 92117 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 5.7 km |
| 92118 | 10b | North Island Nas, CA | 0.9 km |
| 92119 | 10b | El Cajon, CA | 9.9 km |
| 92120 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 6.6 km |
| 92121 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 7.2 km |
| 92122 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 7.3 km |
| 92123 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 0.8 km |
| 92124 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 5.2 km |
| 92126 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 5.1 km |
| 92127 | 10a | Rancho Bernardo, CA | 4.0 km |
| 92128 | 10a | Rancho Bernardo, CA | 2.9 km |
| 92129 | 10a | Rancho Bernardo, CA | 7.7 km |
| 92130 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 11.3 km |
| 92131 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 8.8 km |
| 92132 | 11a | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 2.4 km |
| 92135 | 11a | North Island Nas, CA | 0.8 km |
| 92136 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 5.9 km |
| 92139 | 10b | Chula Vista, CA | 5.6 km |
| 92140 | 11a | San Diego Lindbergh FLD, CA | 1.6 km |
| 92145 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 0.9 km |
| 92147 | 11a | North Island Nas, CA | 3.3 km |
| 92154 | 10b | San Diego Brown FLD, CA | 1.4 km |
| 92155 | 10b | North Island Nas, CA | 6.2 km |
| 92161 | 10b | San Diego Miramar Nas, CA | 9.2 km |
| 92173 | 10b | Imperial Beach Ream FLD Nas, CA | 6.3 km |
| 92179 | 10b | San Diego Brown FLD, CA | 4.5 km |
| 92182 | 10b | San Diego Montgomery FLD, CA | 7.6 km |
| 92672 | 10b | Camp Pendleton Mcas, CA | 17.8 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.
-
What survives my winter?
Runs on the hardiness zone, so it answers for all of San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, 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:
- 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
- Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA Zones 9a–10b
- San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA Zones 8b–10a
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.
- 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 8a, 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.