Gardening in Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL
Every ZIP code in this metro is USDA zone 10a. That is unusual — most metros span several zones — and it means the one number people usually look up is the same wherever you are here.
Your freeze dates
No freeze range is shown for Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL, 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 7 stations serving Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL it runs 327–365 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 88–91 °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 lives through a zone 10a winter
Winter hardiness runs on the zone alone, so this one is exact for the whole of Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL rather than a range. Of 74 perennial fruits, nuts, berries, vegetables and herbs, 25 come through a zone 10a winter — and 49 of the failures are not about cold at all, but about winters too mild to break dormancy or summers too hot.
Among them: Mint, Greek Oregano, Mulberry, Jujube, Wine Grape, Asian Persimmon, Fig, Cardoon. See the full list with reasons.
The 7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melbourne Beach A1A, FL | USC00085603 | January 16 | January 13 | 365 days |
| Melbourne INTL AP, FL | USW00012838 | January 20 | January 12 | 365 days |
| Melbourne Wfo, FL | USC00085612 | January 24 | January 9 | 359 days |
| Palm Bay, FL | USC00086761 | January 30 | January 11 | 343 days |
| Scottsmoor 2.5 Ssw, FL | USC00088051 | February 10 | January 8 | 327 days |
| Titusville 7 E, FL | USW00092821 | January 29 | January 16 | 353 days |
| Titusville, FL | USC00088942 | January 25 | January 13 | 362 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 Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL at once — zone 10a 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.