Ocean County, in New Jersey, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
Well-matched crops include cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens, and the gap between "grows in the area" and "grows in your yard" is closed by soil, sun, and drainage.
Ocean County lies within the Pine Barrens — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Ocean County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Ocean 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 Ocean County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Ocean County — the short answer
Ocean County, New Jersey: USDA zone 7a, about 215 days between hard freezes, across 402K acres.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 7
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~215
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 402K 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 7a is Ocean County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Ocean County's 215-day season, see what your own ground reads.
One county, several growing seasons
Ocean County's hard-freeze record runs about 215 days between freezes — but that is the county-wide average, and several towns inside it carry a markedly different season in their own 30-year record: Harvey Cedars at about 253 days, Surf City at 253 and Beach Haven at 252 (against the county's ~215).
Those are measured records, not estimates. If you garden in one of these pockets, plant against your own town's season rather than the county's ~215-day average.
NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS (1991–2020), 30-year daily minimum record. Only held-out towns carrying their own record are named — a town with no record of its own is absent rather than estimated, and a county with nothing qualifying shows no spread at all.
Heat in Ocean County
Across a year, Ocean County accumulates about 3,269 growing degree days above 50°F, about 53 fewer than the middle New Jersey county — ahead of 8 of New Jersey’s 21 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.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in Ocean County
Across Ocean County, the ground is predominantly Entisols, where Downer, Lakehurst, and Lakewood are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a sand surface. Topsoil pH runs about 4.3–6.3, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group A soils.
Soil order
Entisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
8%
Hydric soils
40%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Ocean County
The USDA soil survey maps 28% of Ocean County as well drained — but another 68% drains differently: 18% very poorly drained, 15% excessively drained.
Downer is the most extensive named soil at 18% of mapped acres, then Lakehurst (12%) and Lakewood (10%).
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 Ocean County
Each reading below is measured for Ocean 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 Ocean County are well drained, in hydrologic group A — 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 Ocean County runs about pH 4.3–6.3, on the acidic side.
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
Wet ground
MeasuredAbout 40% of Ocean County is mapped as hydric — wetland — soil.
If your lot falls in one of those pockets, a standard in-ground bed will fight waterlogging all season, and roots that need air will struggle.
Check how your own ground drains before you dig; raised beds or moisture-loving plantings turn a wet corner from a problem into a niche.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredOcean County runs about 215 days between hard freezes — a long growing season.
There is slack for succession plantings and slow-finishing crops: many vegetables can be sown twice, and the heat-lovers have time to ripen fully.
Plan a second sowing of quick crops after the first comes out, and use the fall window most gardeners let sit idle.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
The kind of country Ocean County is in
Ocean County sits in the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Ocean County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Ocean County's own USDA zone 7a and its own 215-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 New Jersey profile.
Is it too late to plant in Ocean County?
Too late for some crops, right on time for others — a growing season is a sequence, not a deadline. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 10; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 7 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 8 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. Here the season winds down slowly: late sowings, a real autumn harvest, and garlic in the ground before the first hard freeze.
Documented around Ocean County
Spotted lanternfly documented 3 miles from Ocean County, first recorded 2021. What to watch for.
- Japanese beetle7 documented records
- monarch butterfly592 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Ocean County
USGS estimates 1,187 lb of Glyphosate on Ocean County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Atrazine (324 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (276 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 Ocean County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Ocean County — 2,394 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 32 Superfund sites. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Ocean 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 Ocean County
Closest first, across Ocean County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- FORKED RIVER ELEMENTARY SCHOOLUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.3 mi
- NJ TURNPIKE AUTH FORKED RIVER SERVICE AREA RESTAURANT & MOBIL SERVICE STATION 15Brownfields · 2.3 mi
- SUNOCO #0434-5815Underground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- FORKED RIVER SHELLUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- SHELL SERVICE STATIONUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- 290732-- Forked RiverNitrate · 2.5 mi
- RICHARD E RITCHIE ENT INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- BRICKWALL CORPUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- BRICKWALL CORP PLANT NO 2Underground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- LACEY TWP PUBLIC WORKS YARDUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- INDIAN CREEK OIL & SUPPLY CO INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- 291402-- Doubletrouble MW60Nitrate · 2.8 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Ocean 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 Ocean County.
Sources Checked
across Ocean County
Severity Distribution
across Ocean County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Ocean County, two things run higher than the national average across Ocean County — PFAS (29 sites) and Nitrate (898 sites). That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
PFAS: PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are called "forever chemicals" because they do not biodegrade.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test irrigation water source — this is the primary pathway for PFAS to reach garden crops.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Ocean 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 Ocean County average
Your land is one point inside Ocean County
Everything above resolves to Ocean County as a whole — a county whose own towns’ 30-year records run 252 days between freezes in Beach Haven to 253 in Surf City. Your parcel sits at one point in that range, not in the middle of it. 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 Ocean County Average
Ocean County Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Ocean County
- ●One soil character for all of Ocean County
- ●Frost dates read at Ocean County's scale: Apr 7 to Nov 8
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Ocean County's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Ocean County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Ocean County, New Jersey — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Ocean County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Ocean County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Ocean County average
How we know this about Ocean 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 Ocean County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Ocean County
When does frost risk typically end in Ocean County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Ocean County typically lands around Apr 7, 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 Apr 28.
How long is the growing season in Ocean County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Ocean County sees about 215 frost-free days — roughly Apr 7 through Nov 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 28 to Oct 25, about 180 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Ocean County?
The federal record around Ocean County runs heavier than most — 2,394 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (1,116), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.3 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 Ocean County's scale — its 7a band and its 215-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Ocean 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 New Jersey's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Ocean County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Ocean County's own scale — its own ~215-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 2,394 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Ocean County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Ocean County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~215-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Ocean CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 2,394 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.3 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Ocean County's boundary and the 402,106 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7a and a ~215-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Ocean County sitting wholly inside the Atlantic Coastal Pine BarrensUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Ocean County for 2 tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Ocean County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every New Jersey grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom New Jersey
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Ocean County — the ~215 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 Ocean County's 402,106 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 2,394 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 Ocean Countyread your own land →