Monterey County, in California, sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
The conditions favor artichoke, fig, california poppy, and cabbage, among others — though every individual site edits that list with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Monterey County lies within the Salinas Valley and the California Central Coast — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Monterey County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Monterey County, so your frost dates and drainage aren't the county average. Enter your address and we'll score 1,086 plants against your land's actual soil, sun, and frost.
We read public map data around Monterey County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Monterey County — the short answer
Monterey County, California: USDA zone 9a, about 317 days between hard freezes, across 2.1M acres.
- USDA zone
- 9a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Jan 27
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 10
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~317
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 2.1M acres
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
Every figure names the dataset it came from. Hard-freeze dates are county 28°F normals: light frosts run a few weeks past them, and tender transplants usually wait 2–3 weeks after the last hard freeze.
Hardiness Zone Range
Zone 9a is Monterey County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Monterey County's 317-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Monterey County
Across a year, Monterey County accumulates about 3,479 growing degree days above 50°F, about 278 fewer than the middle California county — ahead of 21 of California’s 57 counties. Degree days are the heat a crop actually gets to work with — more of them is more room to ripen a long-season crop before the freeze closes the window.
Winter banks about 1,377 hours below 45°F, 190 more than the California middle of 1,187. Chill is what tells a fruit tree its dormancy is over, and it is set by climate rather than by anything you can build.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in Monterey County
Across Monterey County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Cieneba, Santa Lucia, and Shedd are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silty clay loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.4–7.3, neutral. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Hydric soils
3%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Monterey County
The USDA soil survey maps 68% of Monterey County as well drained — but another 28% drains differently: 21% somewhat excessively drained, 3% excessively drained.
Cieneba is the most extensive named soil at 7% of mapped acres, then Santa Lucia (7%) and Shedd (5%).
Which of them your own lot sits on is a parcel question, not a county one. Check your address for the survey at your boundary.
What this means for growing in Monterey County
Each reading below is measured for Monterey County itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Drainage
MeasuredThe dominant soils across Monterey County are well drained, in hydrologic group C — ground that drains quickly.
The upside is soil you can work early in spring and roots that never drown; the cost is that fast-draining ground dries out fast and leaches nutrients away before plants can use them.
Work in compost and mulch to hold moisture and feed, and water more often in short doses than deep and rarely.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Monterey County runs about pH 6.4–7.3, close to neutral.
This is the range most vegetables prefer — one correction you probably do not have to make, which is genuinely good news for a new bed.
Keep it there with compost rather than lime or sulfur, and only amend if your own soil test says otherwise.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredMonterey County runs about 317 days between hard freezes — close to year-round growing.
Frost is rarely the limit here; winter plantings are as real as summer ones, and the harder question is which crops shrug off the summer heat.
Grow cool-season crops through the mild winter, and choose heat-tolerant varieties for the summer beds.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredMonterey County sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a.
The zone sets which perennials, shrubs, and fruit trees live through an average winter here — a plant rated for a colder zone is a safe bet, one rated warmer needs winter protection or gets treated as an annual.
Match perennials and fruit to the zone before you buy, so nothing you plant is a gamble against the cold.
USDA PHZM 2023
The kind of country Monterey County is in
Monterey County sits in the Central California Foothills and Coastal Mountains — EPA Level III, inside the wider Mediterranean California. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Monterey County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Monterey County's own USDA zone 9a and its own 317-day season between hard freezes, using the same matching engine that runs a full parcel report. These cleared both. Sun, soil pH and drainage vary lot by lot — those are the parcel questions below. Each card opens that plant's California profile.
Is it too late to plant in Monterey County?
Usually not — gardeners here simply switch what goes in the ground as the season moves. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 1; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Jan 27 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 10 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. Here the calendar nearly circles: cool-season crops take the winter shift, and the next window is always close.
Documented around Monterey County
- monarch butterfly111 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Monterey County
USGS estimates 78,339 lb of Methomyl on Monterey County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Glyphosate (77,283 lb) and Malathion (33,995 lb).
Farmland across the whole county, not any one lot. Check your address for the site-by-site record.
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across Monterey County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Monterey County — 2,611 documented sites across 8 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 14 Superfund sites. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Monterey County carries one of the heavier federal records we track — and that's not a verdict on your yard. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis: nothing here says any particular parcel is affected. It does earn one concrete step — before food beds go in the ground, a professional soil test tells you exactly what you're working with, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well almost anywhere in the meantime.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Monterey County
Closest first, across Monterey County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- WENTE VINEYARDS INCBrownfields · 2.9 mi
- JEKEL VINEYARDS SANCTUARY RANCHBrownfields · 3.4 mi
- ST NICHOLAS VINEYARD INCBrownfields · 4.1 mi
- 019S007E29K001MNitrate · 4.6 mi
- GREENFIELD, CITY OFPFAS · 4.9 mi
- AF SILVEIRA & SONS,LLC (FREW RANCH)Brownfields · 5.1 mi
- FRANSCIONI-GRIVA CORPORATIONBrownfields · 5.4 mi
- 018S006E34M001MNitrate · 5.5 mi
- ARROYO LOMA VINEYARDBrownfields · 5.5 mi
- SMITH PACKING INCBrownfields · 5.5 mi
- VALLEY FARM MANAGEMENTBrownfields · 5.6 mi
- NEIL BASSETTI FARMS LLCBrownfields · 5.7 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Monterey County's center, not your beds. Run your own address for what's upwind of you specifically.
Environmental Intelligence
The counts behind that headline — every source type on the record near Monterey County.
Severity Distribution
across Monterey County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Monterey County, Brownfields runs higher than the national average — 2,080 sites across Monterey County. That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
Brownfields: Brownfield sites are former commercial or industrial properties where legacy soil contamination (heavy metals, PAHs, petroleum compounds) may persist.
Check EPA brownfield remediation status — many sites have completed cleanup with institutional controls.
Check your specific parcel in Monterey County
Get exact proximity distances to contamination sources for your specific parcel — plus soil, sun, drainage, and 1,086 plant recommendations.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Monterey County average
Your land is one point inside Monterey County
Everything above resolves to Monterey County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 2.1M acres. Your parcel is one point inside that footprint. Slope, tree cover, a low spot that pools cold air, and what is in the soil are all resolved at the address, and none of them are visible at county scale. That is the honest boundary of this page, and the reason the next step is a reading of your own ground rather than a better county average.
Your Lot vs the Monterey County Average
Monterey County Average
- ●USDA Zones 9a, averaged across Monterey County
- ●One soil character for all of Monterey County
- ●Frost dates read at Monterey County's scale: Jan 27 to Dec 10
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Monterey County's 9a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Monterey County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Monterey County, California — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Monterey County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Monterey County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Monterey County average
How we know this about Monterey County
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at county grain; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at this county’s own record where one resolves, and the labelled statewide window where none does; soils from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, area-weighted across the county’s own map units; boundaries and acreage from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination and pesticide records from the federal sources named in their beats above. Where Monterey County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Monterey County
When does frost risk typically end in Monterey County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Monterey County typically lands around Jan 27, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — earlier than the light-frost dates most charts quote. That marks the hard freeze, not the last light frost — lighter frosts keep biting past it, which is why tender transplants here wait until about Feb 17.
How long is the growing season in Monterey County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Monterey County sees about 317 frost-free days — roughly Jan 27 through Dec 10, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Feb 17 to Nov 26, about 282 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Monterey County?
The federal record around Monterey County runs heavier than most — 2,611 documented sites, mostly Brownfields entries (2,080), the nearest Brownfields record about 2.9 miles out — so test the soil before planting food in the ground, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well in the meantime. Even here, proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what's recorded and where.
Everything above is measured at Monterey County's scale — its 9a band and its 317-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Monterey County's numbers: we read soil, sun, drainage and frost at your exact address. Try it for 14 days — no card required.
Will It Grow Here?
Zone fit is the first question — each answer below reads California's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Monterey County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Monterey County's own scale — its own ~317-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 2,611 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Monterey County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 9aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Monterey County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~317-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Monterey CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 2,611 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Brownfields record about 2.9 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Monterey County's boundary and the 2,100,298 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 9a and a ~317-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Monterey County sitting wholly inside the Central California Foothills and Coastal MountainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Monterey County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Monterey County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every California grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom California
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Monterey County — the ~317 days above is one reading at its centre; the 12 towns below each carry their owntowns in this county →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Monterey County's 2,100,298 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 2,611 documented sites actually reaches your soil — that needs your address, the wind, and the groundwater directionhow we read the record →
- Where cold air settles, which slopes face the sun, and which way the wind runs on your own ground — none of it survives being averaged over Monterey Countyread your own land →