Gardening in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA
This metro spans USDA zones 7b to 11a, so there is no single zone for Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA and anyone who gives you one is rounding. 56% of its ZIP codes are zone 10b; the rest are not.
Which zone you are in depends where you are
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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 56% in zone 10b and wrong for the other 44%. Here is the actual split.
| Zone | ZIP codes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10b | 211 | 56% | |
| 10a | 135 | 36% | |
| 11a | 8 | 2% | |
| 8b | 7 | 2% | |
| 9b | 5 | 1% | |
| 9a | 4 | 1% | |
| 8a | 3 | 1% | |
| 7b | 1 | 0% |
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 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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 38 stations serving Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA it runs 151–365 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 69–97 °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 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7b | 1 | 56 of 74 | 3 |
| 8a | 3 | 57 of 74 | 8 |
| 8b | 7 | 54 of 74 | 11 |
| 9a | 4 | 46 of 74 | 25 |
| 9b | 5 | 40 of 74 | 32 |
| 10a | 135 | 25 of 74 | 49 |
| 10b | 211 | 24 of 74 | 50 |
| 11a | 8 | 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.
The 38 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anaheim, CA | USC00040192 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Avalon Catalina AP, CA | USW00023191 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Burbank Glendale Pasadena AP, CA | USW00023152 | December 31 | December 28 | 365 days |
| Burbank Valley Pump Plt, CA | USC00041194 | January 2 | December 26 | 364 days |
| Culver City, CA | USC00042214 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Elsinore, CA | USC00042805 | January 28 | December 18 | 329 days |
| Fairmont, CA | USC00042941 | April 6 | November 29 | 236 days |
| Fullerton Muni AP, CA | USW00003166 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Getty Ctr, CA | USC00043392 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Hawthorne Muni AP, CA | USW00003167 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Irvine Rch, CA | USC00044303 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Laguna Beach, CA | USC00044647 | January 6 | January 2 | 365 days |
| Lancaster Wm J Fox FLD, CA | USW00003159 | April 3 | November 1 | 211 days |
| Long Beach Daugherty FLD, CA | USW00023129 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Los Angeles Dwtn Usc Campus, CA | USW00093134 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Los Angeles INTL AP, CA | USW00023174 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Mt Wilson Cbs, CA | USC00046006 | April 28 | November 15 | 199 days |
| Newhall 5Nw, CA | USC00046161 | January 8 | January 1 | 365 days |
| Newport Beach Harbor, CA | USC00046175 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Northridge Cal State, CA | USC00046263 | January 2 | January 1 | 365 days |
| Palmdale AP, CA | USW00023182 | March 18 | November 15 | 241 days |
| Palmdale, CA | USC00046624 | March 10 | November 19 | 248 days |
| Pasadena, CA | USC00046719 | January 8 | January 7 | 365 days |
| Pearblossom, CA | USC00046773 | March 13 | December 1 | 258 days |
| Point Mugu Nf, CA | USW00093111 | December 29 | December 24 | 365 days |
| Pomona/Fairplex, CA | USC00047050 | January 8 | December 28 | 354 days |
| Redondo Beach, CA | USC00047326 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| San Gabriel Fire Dept, CA | USC00047785 | January 4 | January 2 | 365 days |
| Santa Ana Fire Stn, CA | USC00047888 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Santa Ana John Wayne AP, CA | USW00093184 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Santa Monica Muni AP, CA | USW00093197 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Santa Monica Pier, CA | USC00047953 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Torrance AP, CA | USW00003122 | January 9 | January 5 | 365 days |
| Tustin Irvine Rch, CA | USC00049087 | January 5 | December 25 | 365 days |
| U C L A, CA | USC00049152 | no freeze recorded | no freeze recorded | 365 days |
| Van Nuys AP, CA | USW00023130 | December 31 | December 30 | 365 days |
| Woodland Hills Pierce College, CA | USC00049785 | January 24 | December 15 | 329 days |
| Wrightwood, CA | USC00049822 | May 16 | October 13 | 151 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 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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.