Home & garden, state by state
Everything we have worked out for Newfoundland and Labrador: what to plant and when, which varieties finish in time, the pests that actually turn up here, and the jobs that pay off month by month. We also cover the rest of the property, from lawns and soil to home care and energy, because a garden rarely stops at the vegetable bed.
The numbers first, because everything else follows from them. Measured at the weather station in St. John's, the last spring freeze falls around May 30 and the first fall freeze falls around October 17, 1,006 growing degree days in the year.
That is little accumulated warmth: tomatoes need a tunnel or a greenhouse here, whatever the frost dates suggest. Garlic does well: 34.8 weeks below 40 °F, comfortably past the six it needs to form a proper head.
Elsewhere on the property in Newfoundland and Labrador: the pests that turn up here.
Figures from Environment and Climate Change Canada. A state is not one climate: elevation, a large lake or the coast can move these dates by two weeks either way, so check your own county with the extension service before you spend money.
St. John’s mean frost dates, May 30 in spring and October 17 in fall, come from Environment and Climate Change Canada and set the sowing calendar below.
At 47.62 degrees north, the reference city for this territory gets 15 hours and 47 minutes of daylight on the longest day of the year.
Newfoundland’s cold winters and late spring frost narrow apple choices to a few hardy prairie-bred varieties, paired correctly and timed to the region’s own frost dates.
Winters in Newfoundland and Labrador don’t hit the extreme lows you’ll find further inland, but they linger.
Newfoundland and Labrador’s ground is, more often than not, acid, sandy, and slow to drain.
Newfoundland and Labrador gardens work inside a frost-free window that runs from late May to mid-October, roughly 140 days, in a climate that almost…
Newfoundland and Labrador gardeners deal with cool-season pests that hit transplants in spring, chewing beetles that arrive as temperatures climb, and…
A month-by-month lawn calendar for Newfoundland and Labrador, built around St. John’s cool-season grasses and the province’s mean fall frost date.
Colorado potato beetle has never established a self-sustaining population across most of Newfoundland and Labrador, and that’s not an accident.
Cabbage maggot larvae show up in Newfoundland and Labrador gardens starting in late May or early June, right after the soil finally warms past the low…