Gardening in Omaha
Nebraska · Prairies & Great Plains · hardiness zone 5a
Now
25°C · Showers
Today
25° / 13°
Soil 6 cm
19°C
First frost
~37 days (Oct 21)
Wind shift and a drop in pressure — stake, tie in, and pick anything ripe before it arrives.
- Bumble bees — Out earlier and later than any other bee — a bumble bee can shiver its flight muscles warm and fly at 5 °C, in drizzle, in wind.
- Ruby-throated hummingbird — Feeding hardest in the first and last hour — it burns through the night's reserves by dawn and must refuel before dark.
In the garden now · September
Who else is working the garden
The insects and soil life out near Omaha, Nebraska in September. Most of them are on your side — learn the few that aren't before you reach for anything.
PollinatorMay–OctMonarch butterfly
Danaus plexippus
Orange with heavy black veins and a white-spotted black border. The caterpillar is banded yellow, white and black.
What it does in the garden →Photo: Christine Young · CC BY 4.0
PollinatorMay–SepRuby-throated hummingbird
Archilochus colubris
Tiny, iridescent green above; the male has a black-looking throat that flares ruby in the right light.
Writing your field guide — reading the forecast, the moon and the map…
Overhead · Omaha, Nebraska
The sky over the garden
The two clocks nothing on the ground can argue with: the length of the day, and the phase of the moon.
The sun
12h 29m of light
Sunrise
07:04
Solar noon
13:18
Sunset
19:33
A month from now the day will be 1h 21m shorter. Enough light for steady growth.
Right now · Omaha, Nebraska
Forces at work
Nothing here is a guess. Each of these is read from this week's forecast and this location's climate record, and each one is pushing the season one way or the other.
- Worth watching
Frost
37 days
Average first fall frost is around Oct 21. Nothing you sow now will finish unless it beats that.
The hard edge of the growing season. Ice inside a leaf ruptures its cells — one night ends a tomato and sweetens a parsnip.
- Working for you
Soil warmth
19.5 °C
Warm enough for beans, corn, squash, cucumber and transplanted tomato and pepper. Roots run hard at this temperature.
Seeds read soil temperature, not the calendar. Six centimetres down is where the decision gets made.
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