Ship Bottom, New Jersey, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
On paper, cabbage, prickly pear, california poppy, and collard greens all suit these conditions — on the ground, soil, sun, and drainage make the final call.
Even in Ship Bottom, no two yards are alike.
A low spot, a south-facing slope, or a stand of trees moves the frost date and sun across a single Ship Bottom lot. 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 Ship Bottom — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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Ship Bottom — the short answer
Ship Bottom, New Jersey: USDA zone 7b, about 255 days between hard freezes, across 456 acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 7b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 21
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 1
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~255
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Town area
- 456 acres
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
Every figure names the dataset it came from. Hard-freeze dates are this town’s own 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 7b is Ship Bottom's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Ship Bottom's 255-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Ship Bottom
Each reading below is measured for Ship Bottom itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredShip Bottom runs about 255 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
Winter hardiness
MeasuredShip Bottom sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b.
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 Ship Bottom is in
Ship Bottom sits in the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at Ship Bottom's own centroid rather than borrowed from Ocean County.
What Grows in Ship Bottom
Every plant below cleared Ship Bottom's own zone 7b and its 255-day season. Each card opens that plant's New Jersey profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Ship Bottom?
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 Feb 21; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 21 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 1 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. A long window like this one runs successions deep into fall — and even its last weeks take quick greens and garlic.
Documented around Ship Bottom
Spotted lanternfly documented 3 miles from Ship Bottom, first recorded 2021. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near Ship Bottom
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Ship Bottom. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 290544-- PW 4Nitrate · 750 ft
- 290549-- PW 5Nitrate · 800 ft
- STANLEY'S BOATSUnderground Storage Tanks · 1200 ft
- BAYVIEW MARINAUnderground Storage Tanks · 1800 ft
- 2421 LLCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2000 ft
- WOOLLEY PROPERTYUnderground Storage Tanks · 2300 ft
- ATLANTIC CITY ELECTRIC COBrownfields · 2500 ft
- CVS PHARMACY #6947Brownfields · 2500 ft
- BRENNAN FUEL LLCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2500 ft
- LUKOIL #57273Underground Storage Tanks · 2600 ft
- BRENNAN FUEL LLC DBA POWER TESTUnderground Storage Tanks · 2600 ft
- EXXON R/S 36195Underground Storage Tanks · 0.5 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Ship Bottom'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 Ship Bottom.
Total Sites
397
within ~10 miles of Ship Bottom
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Ship Bottom
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Ship Bottom
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Ship Bottom, two things run higher than the national average within ~10 miles of Ship Bottom — PFAS (7 sites) and Nitrate (112 sites). It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around 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 Ship Bottom
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 Ship Bottom average
Your land is one point inside Ship Bottom
Everything above resolves to Ship Bottom as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 456 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 town 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 local average.
Your Lot vs the Ship Bottom Average
Ship Bottom Average
- ●USDA Zones 7b, averaged across Ship Bottom
- ●One soil character for all of Ship Bottom
- ●Frost dates read at Ship Bottom's scale: Mar 21 to Dec 1
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Ship Bottom's 7b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Ship Bottom
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Ship Bottom, New Jersey — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Ship Bottom averages can't show:
We read public map data around Ship Bottom — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Ship Bottom average
How we know this about Ship Bottom
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at this town’s own centroid; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at Ship Bottom’s own record; boundaries and acreage from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination records from the federal sources named in their beats above. Soil is not read at town grain anywhere on this page — there is no town-resolution survey in our data, which is why you will find no soil grid here rather than a statewide one wearing a local label. The resolution ledger below names every figure this page inherited.
Common questions about Ship Bottom
When does frost risk typically end in Ship Bottom?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Ship Bottom typically lands around Mar 21, 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 11.
When is the first frost in Ship Bottom?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Ship Bottom typically arrives around Dec 1, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Nov 17, so the watching starts about Nov 1 — about 255 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Ship Bottom?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Ship Bottom sees about 255 frost-free days — roughly Mar 21 through Dec 1, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 11 to Nov 17, about 220 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Ship Bottom?
The federal record around Ship Bottom is a meaningful one — 397 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (233), the nearest Nitrate record about 0.1 miles out — so a soil test before new food beds is a sensible precaution here, not a reason to hold back from growing. Remember that proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what sits where.
How do I protect my plants from frost in Ship Bottom?
From about Nov 1 the job here turns from planting to protecting — the last start even a 30-day crop can finish. As the season closes around the first 28°F hard freeze near Dec 1 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals), three moves buy time: row cover or an old sheet over tender plants on still, clear nights; water the soil the afternoon before a freeze, so it holds warmth overnight; and harvest tomatoes, peppers and basil before Dec 1. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Ship Bottom's scale — its 7b band and its 255-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Ship Bottom's numbers: we read soil, sun, drainage and frost at your exact address. Try it for 14 days — no card required.
What this page reads at Ship Bottom’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at Ship Bottom's own scale — its own ~255-day season between 28°F freezes, the 456 acres it covers and 397 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Ship Bottom's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Ship Bottom's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Mar 21 and Dec 1 and the ~255-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 397 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Ship Bottom, the closest Nitrate record about 0.1 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Ship Bottom's boundary and the 456 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7b and a ~255-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at Ship Bottom's own centroid, the Atlantic Coastal Pine BarrensUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- A documented spotted-lanternfly record within reach of Ship Bottomlydemapr (De Bona & Helmus), 10 km survey lattice
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Ship Bottom's 456 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Ocean County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Ocean County
- The growing challenges every New Jersey grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom New Jersey
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Ocean County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Ship Bottom's 456 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Ship Bottom you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 456 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Nitrate record about 0.1 miles out, measured from the town centrehow we read the record →
- Where cold air settles, which slopes face the sun, and which way the wind runs on your own ground — measured at your address, and averaged away by any Ship Bottom-wide figureread your own land →