St. Joe, IN 46785 Frost Dates
46785, near St. Joe, IN: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/28, roughly 243 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/17, roughly 170 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6a (-10 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 St. Joe, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
St. Joe's growing season runs out in roughly 7 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
04/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/14 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/13 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
St. Joe against the rest of the dataset
St. Joe's growing season runs about 170 days, ranking 29,201 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within IN, it ranks 807 of 927.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 46785: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and St. Joe's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around St. Joe's dates instead of trusting one.