# Data Driven Gardening
> ZIP-level garden climate pages for the US: USDA hardiness zone (2023), NOAA 1991-2020 frost dates with the source station and distance, a 7-day NWS forecast with frost (low <=32F) and high-wind (gust >=40 mph) flags, soil temperature (measured from USCRN or modeled from Open-Meteo, labeled), and chill hours (32-45F) counted from Nov 1: this season, plus last season by the same date, last season's full total, and a multi-year average by date from seasons with >=80% hourly coverage (IEM ASOS, nearest airport). The forecast also shows each day's NWS chance of precipitation and expected amount (gridpoint QPF). Rainfall card: observed precipitation from NOAA NCEI GHCN-Daily for this season, last season by the same date and last season's full total, each with % of days recorded, plus the NOAA 1991-2020 daily normal by date. The season starts Oct 1 (water year) in western dry-summer states (CA, OR, WA, NV, AZ, UT, ID) and Jan 1 elsewhere. The station is chosen with the same distance, elevation and coastal/inland rules as frost dates. San Diego County pages also have a sourced planting and harvest calendar by sub-region (coastal, inland, mountain, desert), shared with the harvest planner.

## Key pages
- [Home / ZIP search](https://datadrivengardening.com/)
- [Browse by state](https://datadrivengardening.com/states/)
- Area pages: https://datadrivengardening.com/area/<slug>/ group nearby ZIPs that share the same frost station, chill station, USDA zone, elevation band and coastal/inland band. Each area page has a table of exact per-ZIP values (elevation, zone, frost dates, chill hours, soil). ZIPs whose data stands apart keep their own indexable page at https://datadrivengardening.com/zip/<zip>/.
- [Methodology and sources](https://datadrivengardening.com/methodology/)
- [Harvest planner](https://datadrivengardening.com/harvest-planner/): Create an interactive chart of your garden plan to see estimated harvest times, harvest size, and get recommendations based on your unique growing plan!

## Machine-readable data
- Per-ZIP JSON: https://datadrivengardening.com/data/zip/<zip>.json (schema ddg-zip/1.0; each metric includes source, station, distance_km and errors)
- ZIP index: https://datadrivengardening.com/data/zips.json (zip -> name and canonical page URL)
- Town/city index: https://datadrivengardening.com/data/places.json ([town, state, [ZIPs]]; GeoNames postal place names plus Census 2020 places, including CDPs, overlapping each ZIP). The site search box accepts a ZIP or a town name ("Portland, OR"), matches prefixes and small typos, and routes to the area or ZIP page.
- Area grouping: https://datadrivengardening.com/data/areas.json

## Notes
- Frost dates are climatological probabilities, not forecasts. Soil values marked "modeled" are estimates.