Highland Meadows, New Mexico, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
These conditions suit cabbage, pawpaw, california poppy, and collard greens — a starting list any specific site will trim or extend with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Even in Highland Meadows, 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 Highland Meadows 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 Highland Meadows — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Highland Meadows — the short answer
Highland Meadows, New Mexico: USDA zone 7a, about 201 days between hard freezes, across 4K acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 10
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~201
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Town area
- 4K 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 7a is Highland Meadows's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Highland Meadows's 201-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Highland Meadows
Each reading below is measured for Highland Meadows itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredHighland Meadows runs about 201 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
MeasuredHighland Meadows sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a.
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 Highland Meadows is in
Highland Meadows sits in the Arizona/New Mexico Plateau — EPA Level III, inside the wider North American Deserts. That is read at Highland Meadows's own centroid rather than borrowed from Valencia County.
What Grows in Highland Meadows
Every plant below cleared Highland Meadows's own zone 7a and its 201-day season. Each card opens that plant's New Mexico profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Highland Meadows?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 13; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 10 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 28 — 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 Highland Meadows
Survey cells within 31 miles of Highland Meadows checked for spotted lanternfly, none carrying a detection — a surveyed negative, not an absence of looking. Nearest documented record 448 miles off. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near Highland Meadows
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Highland Meadows. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- HWY 6 MINI MARTUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.4 mi
- NMDOT MESITA PATROL YARD 46 42Underground Storage Tanks · 1.4 mi
- 08N.03W.20.211Nitrate · 1.9 mi
- LAGUNA VALLEYPFAS · 3.7 mi
- CANONCITO WATER OPER AND MAINTBrownfields · 5.3 mi
- STATION #6 LAGUNA COMPRESSOR STATIONBrownfields · 7.5 mi
- 07N.04W.15.222Nitrate · 7.9 mi
- 10N.03W.26.333Nitrate · 8.6 mi
- 08N.02W.12.111Nitrate · 8.8 mi
- 10N.03W.29.3Nitrate · 8.8 mi
- 08N.02W.24.111Nitrate · 9.0 mi
- 09N.02W.10.300AN.SE.GRNTNitrate · 9.0 mi
3 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Highland Meadows'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 Highland Meadows.
Total Sites
25
within ~10 miles of Highland Meadows
Risk Level
Moderate
Highest-severity
2 brownfield sites
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Highland Meadows
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Highland Meadows
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Highland Meadows, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 20 sites within ~10 miles of Highland Meadows. That's not a problem with your land — it's information about 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).
Check your specific parcel in Highland Meadows
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 Highland Meadows average
Your land is one point inside Highland Meadows
Everything above resolves to Highland Meadows as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 4K 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 Highland Meadows Average
Highland Meadows Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Highland Meadows
- ●One soil character for all of Highland Meadows
- ●Frost dates read at Highland Meadows's scale: Apr 10 to Oct 28
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Highland Meadows's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Highland Meadows
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Highland Meadows, New Mexico — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Highland Meadows averages can't show:
We read public map data around Highland Meadows — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Highland Meadows average
How we know this about Highland Meadows
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 Highland Meadows’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 Highland Meadows
When does frost risk typically end in Highland Meadows?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Highland Meadows typically lands around Apr 10, 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 May 1.
When is the first frost in Highland Meadows?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Highland Meadows typically arrives around Oct 28, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Oct 14, so the watching starts about Sep 28 — about 201 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Highland Meadows?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Highland Meadows sees about 201 frost-free days — roughly Apr 10 through Oct 28, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer May 1 to Oct 14, about 166 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Highland Meadows?
The federal record around Highland Meadows shows 25 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (20), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.4 miles out — a typical footprint for a growing area, and proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. It's worth seeing which recorded sites sit closest to where you grow, and testing the soil before new food beds near any of them.
How do I protect my plants from frost in Highland Meadows?
From about Sep 28 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 Oct 28 (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 Oct 28. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Highland Meadows's scale — its 7a band and its 201-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Highland Meadows'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 Highland Meadows’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at Highland Meadows's own scale — its own ~201-day season between 28°F freezes, the 4,432 acres it covers and 25 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Highland Meadows's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Highland Meadows's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Apr 10 and Oct 28 and the ~201-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 25 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Highland Meadows, the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.4 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Highland Meadows's boundary and the 4,432 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7a and a ~201-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at Highland Meadows's own centroid, the Arizona/New Mexico PlateauUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Lanternfly survey cells around Highland Meadows checked, none carrying a detectionlydemapr (De Bona & Helmus), 10 km survey lattice
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Highland Meadows's 4,432 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Valencia County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Valencia County
- The growing challenges every New Mexico grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom New Mexico
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Valencia County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Highland Meadows's 4,432 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Highland Meadows you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 4,432 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.4 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 Highland Meadows-wide figureread your own land →
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