Home & garden, state by state
Everything we have worked out for Rhode Island: 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 Providence, the last spring freeze runs April 7 to April 17 and the first fall freeze runs October 24 to November 3, USDA zones 6a-7b, 3,229 growing degree days in the year.
Garlic does well: 26.1 weeks below 40 °F, comfortably past the six it needs to form a proper head.
Elsewhere on the property in Rhode Island: the pests that turn up here.
Figures from NOAA's 1991-2020 climate normals. 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.
A rundown of which flowers survive Rhode Island’s cold winters and humid summers, including native perennials, reliable border plants, and species better left to warmer states.
Rhode Island winters hover in a narrow, stubborn band: not brutal, but long enough to run a furnace or a woodstove for months on end.
Rhode Island’s apple crop depends less on winter cold than on bloom timing against the region’s April frost window, per NOAA’s Providence-area normals.
Providence’s mean first fall frost lands somewhere between October 24 and November 3, a stretch that straddles Halloween rather than falling safely…
Rhode Island’s last and first frost dates in Providence, per NOAA, set a frost-free window of roughly six months for warm-season vegetables.
Rhode Island’s USDA zones and Providence’s climate normals show which apple varieties, pairings, and planting timing succeed in the state’s gardens.
Rhode Island’s growing season runs on three numbers: a hardiness zone that spans nearly two full USDA bands, a last spring frost date that lands in…
Winter moth caterpillars start feeding on Rhode Island trees the moment buds break in April, but the adult moths that lay the eggs for that damage show…
Viburnum leaf beetle shows up in Rhode Island twice a year on a predictable schedule: larvae strip leaves in late spring, adults finish the job in…
If you’re growing true lilies in Rhode Island, the lily leaf beetle isn’t a maybe.