Milltown, NJ 08818 Frost Dates
08818, near Milltown, NJ: the frost window
Around 04/17 is the usual last spring frost, about 232 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/23, roughly 190 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7a (0 to 5°F average annual minimum) comes from the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map; the frost dates above are the 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting NOAA station for Milltown, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Milltown's growing season runs out in roughly 8 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
How much risk comes with planting early here
04/17 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/02 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/06 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Milltown against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 190 frost-free days, Milltown places 21,123 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NJ, it ranks 575 of 906.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 08818: local microclimates, on what one yard in Milltown can differ from the 08818 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Milltown's frost date answer different questions.