The Long Island / North Fork spans USDA hardiness zones 7a-7b — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
New York's Long Island region spans Nassau and Suffolk counties (Census FIPS 36059, 36103) across USDA zones 7a–7b with a 229–244 day frost-free season, and its North Fork peninsula is a TTB-recognized American Viticultural Area (27 CFR §9.101). A short list that earns its place here — kale, tomato, garlic, and lilac — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
The Long Island / North Fork spans New York.
Your yard isn't all of the Long Island / North Fork.
The Long Island / North Fork spans USDA zones 7a-7b, but your parcel sits in exactly one — and slope, tree cover, and low spots nudge it further. 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 Long Island / North Fork — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
The Long Island / North Fork — the short answer
The Long Island / North Fork: USDA zones 7a-7b, 229–244 frost-free days, in New York.
- USDA zones
- 7a-7b
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Frost-free season
- 229–244 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- Counties
- 2
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Region type
- County cluster
- Growable Ground growing-region registry
Region boundary: Growable Ground growing-region registry — curated county clusters, EPA Level III ecoregions, and town clusters drawn finer than any county. Where a region publishes no measured season, no season figure is shown.
Hardiness Zone Range
What Grows in the Long Island / North Fork
Plants matched to the Long Island / North Fork's USDA zones 7a-7b, ordered by how much hardiness margin each has across the region — the ones with room to spare at both ends of this band lead. Each links to its full growing profile.
Native Plants of the Long Island / North Fork
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in this region’s state, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Long Island / North Fork’s USDA zones 7a-7b — closest range match first. Presence is recorded by state, so a plant can be documented across the state and still be scarce in your corner of the region.
The ground across the Long Island / North Fork
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across two member counties — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Inceptisols, at 55% of mapped acres, followed by Entisols (39%), Histosols (5%) and Spodosols (1%). Five soil orders appear somewhere inside the footprint, which is the honest reason a regional soil answer only goes so far. The most extensive named soils are Riverhead, Plymouth, and Haven.
34% of those acres are well drained, and another 21% excessively drained, 6% moderately well drained. Topsoil pH runs 4.4–5.6 between the lowest and the highest county on record. 25% of the footprint is classed prime farmland.
Soil order
Inceptisols
Drainage
Well drained
Topsoil pH
4.4–5.6
Hydric soils
7%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. Nassau County holds the most wetland ground here, at 12% — soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Long Island / North Fork
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Long Island / North Fork. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records34% of the mapped acres across the Long Island / North Fork are well drained — ground that drains quickly. That is area-weighted across all two of its mapped counties.
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
From county recordsTopsoil across the Long Island / North Fork runs pH 4.4–5.6 — acidic in all two of them.
Blueberries, potatoes, and rhododendrons thrive in it, but most vegetables start locking out nutrients below about pH 6.0 and grow pale and stunted no matter how much you feed them.
A measured lime application raises pH for the crops that need it — but test first, because the right rate depends on your own soil, not the county average.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Long Island / North Fork — and how to grow with it.
Across the Long Island / North Fork's 2 counties the federal record holds 11,476 documented sites, mostly Nitrate (6,452), Brownfields (4,002) and Underground Storage Tanks (618). The heaviest single county is Suffolk County, with 6,351.
That is a regional count, not a reading of any one lot — proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis. Open the map outlined to the Long Island / North Fork to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the 2 counties in the Long Island / North Fork
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around the Long Island / North Fork, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 6,452 sites across the 2 counties in the Long Island / North Fork. It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
Your land is one point inside the Long Island / North Fork
Everything above resolves to the Long Island / North Fork as a whole — a footprint spanning USDA zones 7a-7b. Your parcel sits in exactly one of them. 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 region 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 regional average.
Your Lot vs the Long Island / North Fork Average
Long Island / North Fork Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a-7b, averaged across Long Island / North Fork
- ●One soil character for all of Long Island / North Fork
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Long Island / North Fork's 7a-7b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Long Island / North Fork
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Long Island / North Fork — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Long Island / North Fork averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Long Island / North Fork — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Long Island / North Fork average
How we know this about the Long Island / North Fork
The boundary: a cluster of neighboring counties. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one, and every figure on this page was measured over the counties inside it rather than borrowed from the state around it.
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, aggregated across the footprint; the growing season from NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS 1991–2020 28°F normals, read at each member’s own record; boundaries from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination record from the federal sources named in that beat above; the soil from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, read at each member county’s own record and weighted to this footprint by land area. Where a member carries no record of its own, it is absent from the figure rather than filled in.
Common questions about the Long Island / North Fork
What hardiness zone is the Long Island / North Fork?
The Long Island / North Fork spans USDA hardiness zones 7a-7b, aggregated from the USDA Agricultural Research Service Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 across the region's counties. Zones reflect average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1991–2020 data.
How long is the growing season in the Long Island / North Fork?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, the Long Island / North Fork's counties mostly run 233 to 240 frost-free days, median 237 (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020, over 2 member counties). That 7-day spread is the honest read — no single season describes 2 counties, and each county guide below carries its own.
When does frost risk end in the Long Island / North Fork?
Across the Long Island / North Fork, the middle half of member counties see their last 28°F hard freeze between Mar 26 and Mar 28 (median Mar 27), and their first fall freeze between Nov 16 and Nov 21. Those are hard freezes, not the last light frost: tender transplants wait for about Apr 17, and elevation decides which end of a 2-day spread you garden in.
What grows well in the Long Island / North Fork?
The Long Island / North Fork's conditions suit plants such as Kale, Tomato, Garlic, Lilac, Apple, Grape. What actually thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage — we score each plant against the real conditions at your address.
How is the Long Island / North Fork defined?
The Long Island / North Fork is defined here as a curated cluster of 2 neighboring counties that share a growing character. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one — every county in it is named on this page.
Which states does the Long Island / North Fork cover?
The Long Island / North Fork spans New York. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
Appalachia, Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley, Champlain Valley, Mohawk Valley, and The Adirondacks share at least one state with the Long Island / North Fork. Growing regions overlap and interlock — a single address can sit inside more than one, which is why the precise read is always the parcel, not the region.
What this page reads at the Long Island / North Fork’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at the Long Island / North Fork's own scale — the zone 7a-7b band across its footprint, a median 237-day season across its 2 counties and 11,476 documented federal contamination records across its 2 counties, 6,351 of them in Suffolk County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 7a-7b aggregated across all 2 counties in the footprintUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 2 counties this region is curated fromGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The growing character that makes this region distinct from the states it crossesGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The 28°F season across the footprint — the middle half of its 2 counties run 233 to 240 frost-free days, median 237NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- The federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 11,476 documented federal contamination records across its 2 counties, 6,351 of them in Suffolk County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 55% Inceptisols, topsoil pH 4.4–5.6, area-weighted across its 2 mapped countiesUSDA NRCS SSURGO
Inherited from a wider read
- The candidate plant list — its state's curated sets, merged and filtered to zones 7a-7bfrom New York
What this page can’t tell you
- Which end of the 7-day range your ground sits at — 233 days at one extreme, 240 at the other, decided mostly by elevationfrost dates explained →
- Which of those soils your own ground sits on — the survey maps them county-wide, and they change across a drivewaysoil types explained →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on one specific lotwhy one lot differs from the next →
Explore the Long Island / North Fork
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across New York
The vast eastern mountain region of steep hollows, thin acidic soils, and short upland seasons — apples, brambles, ramps, and forest crops on hard-won ground. (Union of the core Appalachian ecoregions.)
Deep glacial lakes moderate New York's premier cool-climate wine region, where lake-effect slopes favour grapes, apples, and other tree fruit.
The Hudson River corridor's fertile valley floors and benched hillsides have grown orchards, vineyards, and market vegetables since the colonial era.
The lake-tempered lowland on both shores of Lake Champlain — clay and silt plains that make the warmest, driest, and most productive farm ground in Vermont, with apple and cold-climate wine country on the New York shore.
New York's east–west Mohawk River corridor, where cold 4a highland gives way to milder 5b valley-floor farmland across a roughly 168-day median frost-free season (last frost near the end of April, first frost around mid-October).
New York's vast northern mountain wilderness — very cold winters, thin acidic soils, and the state's shortest growing seasons.