Starting Vegetable Seeds Indoors: Why, What you Need and How
There are two ways to grow vegetables from seed: direct sowing and transplanting. The best method to use depends on what you are growing, your climate, the ...
USDA Zones
To direct sow seeds you simply plant them into your outdoor garden soil. If you live in a warm climate (between <anchor>USDA Zones</anchor> seven or eight and 13) it’s possible to direct sow pretty much anything, as long asyou’re willing to wait for warm enough weather to begin your garden. If you live in a cool climate (between USDA zones two and six) there are some vegetables - like tomatoes, peppers and onions - that cannot be direct sown. They need a longer period of warm weather than you will have available, so you will need grow them from transplants.
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map | Planting Zones Map USA - Garden.org
# USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

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The USDA Hardiness Zone Map divides North America into 11 separate planting zones;
each growing zone is 10°F warmer (or colder) in an average winter than the
adjacent zone. If you see a hardiness zone in a gardening catalog or plant
description, chances are it refers to this USDA map. To find your USDA
Hardiness Zone, enter your zip code or use the map below.
Click here for more information about hardiness maps.

## Find Your USDA Planting Zone

Find your zone using the map below or enter your zip code.

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## What is Plant Hardiness?

Gardeners need a way to compare their garden climates with the climate where
a plant is known to grow well. That's why climate zone maps were created.
Zone maps are tools that show where various permanent landscape plants can
adapt. If you want a shrub, perennial, or tree to survive and grow year
after year, the plant must tolerate year-round conditions in your area, such
as the lowest and highest temperatures and the amount and distribution of
rainfall.

## Using the Plant Hardiness Zone Map

The latest version of the USDA Zone Map was jointly developed by USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University's (OSU) PRISM Climate Group, and released in December of 2023. To help develop the new map, USDA and OSU requested that horticultural and climatic experts review the zones in their geographic area, and trial versions of the new map were revised based on their expert input.

2023 USDA Hardiness Zone Map Thumbnail

## The 1990 USDA Hardiness Zone Map

This webpage was originally based on the 1990 USDA Hardiness Zone Map, which is one of
several maps developed to provide this critical climate information. The USDA
map is the one most gardeners in the eastern United States rely on, and the one
that most national garden magazines, catalogs, books, websites and nurseries
currently use. This map divides North America into 11 separate zones. Each
zone is 10°F warmer (or colder) in an average winter than the adjacent zone.
(In some versions of the map, each zone is further divided into "a" and "b"
regions.)

## What Plants Can I Grow in my Zone

Surviving the winter is a primary cause of perennial plants, shrubs and trees not surviving the winter in your garden. Now that you've used this page to find your hardiness zone, when you are shopping for plants check the plant tag and there will almost always be a "Zone Range" listed. For example, if you are in zone 6, then plants that are "Zone 5-8" will survive your winters just fine. Many plants in our plants database have their zone hardiness listed.

## Great for the East

The USDA map does a fine job of delineating the garden climates of the
eastern half of North America. That area is comparatively flat, so mapping
is mostly a matter of drawing lines approximately parallel to the Gulf Coast
every 120 miles or so as you move north. The lines tilt northeast as they
approach the Eastern Seaboard. They also demarcate the special climates
formed by the Great Lakes and by the Appalachian mountain ranges.

## Zone Map Drawbacks

But this map has shortcomings. In the eastern half of the country, the USDA
map doesn't account for the beneficial effect of a snow cover over perennial
plants, the regularity or absence of freeze-thaw cycles, or soil drainage
during cold periods. And in the rest of the country (west of the 100th
meridian, which runs roughly through the middle of North and South Dakota
and down through Texas west of Laredo), the USDA map fails.

## Problems in the West

Many factors beside winter lows, such as elevation and precipitation,
determine western growing climates in the West. Weather comes in from the
Pacific Ocean and gradually becomes less marine (humid) and more continental
(drier) as it moves over and around mountain range after mountain range.
While cities in similar zones in the East can have similar climates and grow
similar plants, in the West it varies greatly. For example, the weather and
plants in low elevation, coastal Seattle are much different than in high
elevation, inland Tucson, Arizona, even though they're in the same zone USDA
zone 8.

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