The Pine Barrens spans USDA hardiness zones 7a-7b — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
New Jersey's acidic, sandy Pinelands — nutrient-poor soils that nonetheless yield blueberries and cranberries at a commercial scale. A short list that earns its place here — tomato, sweet corn, peach, and blueberry — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
The Pine Barrens spans New Jersey.
Your yard isn't all of the Pine Barrens.
The Pine Barrens 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 Pine Barrens — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Pine Barrens — the short answer
The Pine Barrens: USDA zones 7a-7b, 215–241 frost-free days, in New Jersey.
- USDA zones
- 7a-7b
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Frost-free season
- 215–241 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- Counties
- 5
- 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 Pine Barrens
Plants matched to the Pine Barrens' 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 Pine Barrens
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in this region’s state, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Pine Barrens’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 Pine Barrens
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across five member counties — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Ultisols, at 41% of mapped acres, followed by Entisols (30%), Histosols (13%) and Spodosols (12%). 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 Downer, Atsion, and Lakehurst.
28% of those acres are well drained, and another 22% very poorly drained, 18% moderately well drained. Topsoil pH runs 4.3–6.3 between the lowest and the highest county on record. 20% of the footprint is classed prime farmland.
Soil order
Ultisols
Drainage
Well drained
Topsoil pH
4.3–6.3
Hydric soils
37%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. Cape May County holds the most wetland ground here, at 55% — soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Pine Barrens
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Pine Barrens. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records28% of the mapped acres across the Pine Barrens are well drained — ground that drains quickly. That is area-weighted across all five 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 Pine Barrens runs pH 4.3–6.3 — acidic in all five 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
Wet ground
From county recordsAbout 37% of the ground across the Pine Barrens is mapped as hydric — wetland — soil. Cape May County carries the most, at 55%.
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
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Pine Barrens — and how to grow with it.
Across the Pine Barrens' 5 counties the federal record holds 8,363 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks (4,278), Nitrate (2,610) and Brownfields (1,081). The heaviest single county is Ocean County, with 2,394.
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 Pine Barrens to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the 5 counties in the Pine Barrens
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around the Pine Barrens, two things run higher than the national average across the 5 counties in the Pine Barrens — Superfund (145 sites) and Nitrate (2,610 sites). Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Superfund: Superfund sites represent the most severe contamination in the federal system.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Commission professional soil testing before any food production (test for heavy metals, VOCs, and SVOCs).
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 Pine Barrens
Everything above resolves to the Pine Barrens 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 Pine Barrens Average
Pine Barrens Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a-7b, averaged across Pine Barrens
- ●One soil character for all of Pine Barrens
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Pine Barrens' 7a-7b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Pine Barrens
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Pine Barrens — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Pine Barrens averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Pine Barrens — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Pine Barrens average
How we know this about the Pine Barrens
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 Pine Barrens
What hardiness zone is the Pine Barrens?
The Pine Barrens 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 Pine Barrens?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, the Pine Barrens' counties mostly run 220 to 231 frost-free days, median 222 (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020, over 5 member counties). That 11-day spread is the honest read — no single season describes 5 counties, and each county guide below carries its own.
When does frost risk end in the Pine Barrens?
Across the Pine Barrens, the middle half of member counties see their last 28°F hard freeze between Mar 31 and Apr 1 (median Apr 1), and their first fall freeze between Nov 8 and Nov 17. Those are hard freezes, not the last light frost: tender transplants wait for about Apr 22, and elevation decides which end of a 1-day spread you garden in.
What grows well in the Pine Barrens?
The Pine Barrens' conditions suit plants such as Tomato, Sweet Corn, Peach, Blueberry, Cranberry. 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 Pine Barrens defined?
The Pine Barrens is defined here as a curated cluster of 5 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 Pine Barrens cover?
The Pine Barrens spans New Jersey. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
Appalachia, North Jersey (Gateway / NYC-Metro Urban Corridor), Delaware Bayshore, and New Jersey Skylands (Northwest Highlands) share at least one state with the Pine Barrens. 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 Pine Barrens’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at the Pine Barrens' own scale — the zone 7a-7b band across its footprint, a median 222-day season across its 5 counties and 8,363 documented federal contamination records across its 5 counties, 2,394 of them in Ocean County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 7a-7b aggregated across all 5 counties in the footprintUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 5 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 5 counties run 220 to 231 frost-free days, median 222NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- The federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 8,363 documented federal contamination records across its 5 counties, 2,394 of them in Ocean County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 41% Ultisols, topsoil pH 4.3–6.3, area-weighted across its 5 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 Jersey
What this page can’t tell you
- Which end of the 11-day range your ground sits at — 220 days at one extreme, 231 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 Pine Barrens
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across New Jersey
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.)
North Jersey's dense urban core — Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, Fort Lee, Edgewater along the Hudson palisades — grows on a materially longer clock than the rest of the state. A strong urban heat island plus Hudson River and harbor moderation push Hudson County to 254 frost-free days at zone 7b — the highest of any New Jersey county and roughly 55 more than the northwest highlands (Sussex 196, Morris 198) — so an urban grower here can hold tender crops later into fall than the statewide 7a average implies. The growing reality here is also distinct from the farm-belt siblings: rooftop, balcony, and community-plot horticulture rather than open acreage.
Where New Jersey's farmland runs down to the tidal marshes of Delaware Bay — a warmer, produce-growing coastal plain that reads nothing like the acidic Pinelands just to the east. Salem and Cumberland counties are the heart of the state's truck-farming country, the ground where the Jersey tomato and the Seabrook Farms vegetable belt took root, and the bay's marine moderation stretches Salem County's frost-free window to 244 days — the longest of any farm county in New Jersey (county_data.json). All three bayshore counties sit in a uniform 7b band, so every parcel here is scored on its own bay-moderated season rather than a regional average that would blend in the colder, sandier pine interior.
The only corner of New Jersey a full USDA zone colder than the rest of the state: Sussex, Warren, and Morris sit in zone 6b while the coast and metro run 7a–7b. The Kittatinny ridge and the Highlands hold the frost-free season to roughly 196–206 days county-wide — mountain towns like High Point and Vernon shorter still — against 220–254 on the coastal plain. Cold-air drainage in the valleys pushes last frost weeks later and first frost weeks earlier, so any statewide 7a average would hand a grower here a warm-season window that isn't actually there. Plant to zone 6b and the tighter season, not to the state map.