State guide
Planting zones in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico spans USDA zones 11b to 13b across its 132 ZIP codes, so there is no single zone for the state and anyone who gives you one is rounding. 54% of its ZIP codes are zone 13a; the rest are not.
Your ZIP code
Get the exact answer for your address
Everything above describes Puerto Rico 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.
Which zone you are in depends where you are
Puerto Rico covers 5 hardiness zones. A guide that gives the state one zone has picked whichever is largest and rounded everyone else into it — which is fine for the 54% in zone 13a and wrong for the other 46%. Here is the actual split, by ZIP code.
| Zone | ZIP codes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13a | 71 | 54% | |
| 12b | 40 | 30% | |
| 13b | 14 | 11% | |
| 12a | 5 | 4% | |
| 11b | 2 | 2% |
Zones are published per ZIP code, so yours is exact even though the state's is not. The hardiness tool will tell you which one you are in.
Your freeze dates
No freeze range is given for Puerto Rico, and that is the honest answer rather than a missing one. Of its 27 NOAA stations, none have an ordinary freeze window. 27 record no freeze at any probability. There is no remainder to take a range across, and that is the finding rather than a gap in the data.
Frost is simply not the constraint across most of Puerto Rico. The tools below still answer for individual ZIP codes, and will say which case yours falls in.
Your growing season
NOAA publishes a growing-season length for each station, and across the 27 stations in Puerto Rico it runs 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 70–92 °F , reaching 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 in the hotter parts of the state.
The ends of each range, named
A range with no station behind it cannot be checked, and Puerto Rico has too many stations to table them all. So every figure above is reported here with the station standing at each end of it, by name and NOAA ID. No station on this page represents Puerto Rico — these are its edges, which is a different claim.
| Measure | Earliest / lowest | Station | Latest / highest | Station |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Growing season | 365 days | Adjuntas Substn, PR RQC00660061 | 365 days | San Juan L M Marin AP, PR RQW00011641 |
| Mean summer high | 70 °F | Pico Del Este, PR RQC00666992 | 92 °F | Mona Island 2, PR RQC00666258 |
These are medians, not averages — NOAA publishes freeze dates as a probability distribution, and half of years freeze later than the date shown.
What survives the winter changes across Puerto Rico
Of 74 perennial fruits, nuts, berries, vegetables and herbs, 18 come through the winter in zone 11b and only 14 in zone 12a. Winter hardiness runs on the zone alone, so each row below is exact for the ZIP codes in it.
| Zone | ZIPs | Survive | Fail for being too warm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11b | 2 | 18 of 74 | 56 |
| 12a | 5 | 14 of 74 | 60 |
| 12b | 40 | 14 of 74 | 60 |
| 13a | 71 | 14 of 74 | 60 |
| 13b | 14 | 14 of 74 | 60 |
The best zone in Puerto Rico is 11b, which is not its mildest — 13b is. The count peaks in the middle and falls both ways, because the warm end loses plants to insufficient winter chill and summer heat rather than to cold. 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 heat that comes with it. See the full list with reasons.
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 exactly for your ZIP code rather than for Puerto Rico as a whole — 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.
Metro areas in Puerto Rico
6 metro areas here have its own page, with the freeze dates from every station serving it, a spring calendar built from those stations, and every ZIP code in it listed with that ZIP code's exact zone and nearest station.
- San Juan-Bayamón-Caguas, PR Zones 12a–13b
- Ponce, PR Zones 12b–13a
- Mayagüez, PR Zones 12b–13a
- Aguadilla, PR Zones 12b–13a
- Arecibo, PR Zones 12b–13a
- Guayama, PR Zone 13a
Counties in Puerto Rico
No county in Puerto Rico has its own page yet. A county earns one when it holds enough ZIP codes and cites enough NOAA stations to say something its neighbours' pages would not — and where a county sits mostly inside a metro area, the metro page already covers it. The zone split above and the tools answer every Puerto Rico ZIP code regardless.
Other states to compare
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.
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, growing seasons and summer highs are NOAA's 1991–2020 Climate Normals, read from every station in Puerto Rico. Which ZIP codes are in Puerto Rico comes from the Census ZIP-to-county relation, since a county's federal code begins with its state's. Nothing here is estimated.
This page names no single station for Puerto Rico on purpose. Picking one to represent a state sounds reasonable and is not — the same reason the metro pages refuse it, only more so at this size. Instead every range names the station at each end, so you can check both without either one being made to speak for the state.