The trailhead
Start here. Where do you want to go?
Every trail below is Harare right now — this month's fish, this week's soil and frost, what's ready in the woods, tonight's sky. Tap a place on the map to see what's waiting there, or let us plan a trail for today.
Tap a place on the map to see what’s there — tap it again to go.Point at a place on the map, or tap it, to see what’s there.
The map faces south, like you at midday: the sun comes up on your left, in the east, and goes down on your right, in the west.
Pick your trail for today
Who's coming?
How long have you got?
What do you feel like?
Answer any of these and we’ll draw you a trail on the map — one stop for an hour, two for half a day, three for all day.
Today at the trailhead
Wind shift and a drop in pressure — stake, tie in, and pick anything ripe before it arrives.
- Ground beetlebest now — Running the soil surface after dark, taking slugs, cutworms and larvae. One of the best predators a garden has.
- Earthwormbest now — At the surface after dark and in wet weather, pulling leaves down into the burrow.
Right now
15°C / 59°F
Drizzle · wind 8 km/h · 97% RH
Soil (6 cm)
22°C / 72°F
Warm-season seeds go
Hardiness zone
11a
est. from 9-yr extreme low 5°C
Frost window
Rare – Rare
~366 frost-free days (avg)
Sun
05:32 – 17:54
sunrise – sunset today
Moon
Waning Crescent
15% lit · anglers' solunar: good · full 2026-10-26
7-day forecast
Africa/Harare
Wed
Drizzle
26° / 15°
1.7 mm
Thu
Drizzle
26° / 16°
1.1 mm
Fri
Drizzle
25° / 16°
0.9 mm
Sat
Partly cloudy
25° / 15°
dry
Sun
Clear
26° / 14°
dry
Mon
Clear
27° / 13°
dry
Tue
Clear
27° / 15°
dry
Writing your field guide — reading the forecast, the moon and the map…
Overhead · Harare, Zimbabwe
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 21m of light
Sunrise
05:33
Solar noon
11:43
Sunset
17:54
A month from now the day will be 0h 28m longer. Enough light for steady growth.
The moon
Waning Crescent
15% lit · waning · day 26 of 29.5
- Next full
- Oct 26 · 20d
- Hunter's Moon
- Next new
- Oct 10 · 4d
- Darkest nights
Planting by the moon: Last quarter to new: a resting phase — weed, prune, harvest, turn compost and prepare beds.
Anglers' solunar rating: good — the tradition says fish feed hardest in the days either side of new and full, and around moonrise and moonset. The evidence is mixed; light and weather matter more.
Turn of the season
Summer solstice
Dec 21 · 76 days away
Frost is rare here — most years see none, or a night or two at most.
Next moons
- New MoonOct 10
- First QuarterOct 18
- Full Moon · Hunter's MoonOct 26
- Last QuarterNov 1
Right now · Harare, Zimbabwe
Forces at work right now
Frost, soil warmth, light, rain and the moon set the pace for the garden, the water and the woods alike. Every reading below comes from this location's own forecast and climate record.
- Quiet right now
Frost
366 frost-free days
Frost is rare here. Coldest night in the next week: 13.1 °C.
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
22.1 °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.
- Working for you
Day length
12h 21m
Gaining about under a minute of daylight a day. Every extra minute is growth you don't have to pay for.
The one thing weather can't change. Plants count photoperiod to decide when to bolt, bulb, flower and go dormant.
- Working for you
Heat units
73 GDD / 7 days
Steady heat. Tomatoes set fruit, corn stretches, and pest generations turn over on schedule.
Growing degree days: the running total of warmth above 10 °C. Crops and insects both run on this clock rather than on dates.
- Holding things back
Rain
3.7 mm / 7 days
Only 3.7 mm over seven days. A garden wants roughly 25 mm a week — water deeply twice rather than lightly every day.
Sets the pace for everything: germination, fungal fruiting, slug nights, and how a river runs for the next three days.
- Working for you
Pollination
7 of 7 flying days
7 good flying days ahead. Open flowers will get worked — leave a shallow water dish out and hold off on any spray until dusk.
A third of what you eat needs an insect to have visited first. Bees fly on temperature and wind, not on your schedule.
In season now · October
What you can pick right now
7 wild edibles typically ready in October near Harare, Zimbabwe. Seasons shift a week or two with the weather — check each one before you go.
FruitJune – OctoberTamarind
Tamarindus indica
A big, dense, evergreen tree with feathery leaves of many small paired leaflets (no single leaflet at the tip) and small yellow flowers streaked with orange or red. The fruit is a brown, slightly curved pod with a thin, brittle shell over sticky, brown, sweet-sour pulp and one to six glossy brown seeds; African pods are the short kind.
How to know it & its look-alikes →Photo: Maria Janeiro · CC BY 4.0
FruitMay – OctoberMonkey orange (green monkey orange)
Strychnos spinosa
A small, often spiny tree with opposite, rounded, glossy leaves showing three to five veins running from the base. The fruit is large, round and hard, with a woody shell that turns from green (often speckled) to yellow as it ripens; inside, many hard brown seeds packed in sweet-sour, brown, edible pulp.
How to know it & its look-alikes →Photo: Shaun Swanepoel · CC BY 4.0
GreenOctober – MarchSpider plant (cat's whiskers)
Cleome gynandra
An upright, branching annual up to about 1.5 m with a sticky, glandular stem and a strong smell. Leaves are hand-shaped, of three to seven (usually five) finely toothed leaflets. The flowers are white or purple-tinged with four clawed petals, and the purple stamens and the ovary are held out on a long stalk well beyond the petals — the cat's whiskers. Pods are long, thin and beaked.
How to know it & its look-alikes →Photo: Arturo Benavides Mendoza · CC BY 4.0
Has a dangerous look-alikeGreenSeptember – AprilWild garlic (Tulbaghia)
Tulbaghia violacea
Clumps of narrow, grey-green, strap-like leaves up to about 60 cm (2 ft), and on bare stalks above them loose heads of tubular lilac-mauve flowers from midsummer into autumn. Leaves and flowers smell strongly of garlic when bruised — and that smell is the test.
How to know it & its look-alikes →Photo: Gary Rogers · CC BY 4.0
FruitJanuary – DecemberSycamore fig
Ficus sycomorus
A big, spreading tree with yellowish to orange bark that peels in papery strips, and rough, heart-shaped leaves with prominent yellow veins beneath. The figs, 2–3 cm (about 1 in) across, grow in thick clusters on short leafless branchlets from the trunk and main branches and ripen from greenish-buff to yellow or reddish. Broken twigs bleed milky latex.
How to know it & its look-alikes →Photo: Alan Manson · CC BY 4.0
GreenOctober – MarchSheep sorrel
Rumex acetosella
Small arrow-shaped leaves with two backward-pointing lobes at the base, on a wiry reddish stem. Sharply lemony taste.
How to know it & its look-alikes →Photo: Kieran Hanrahan · CC BY 4.0
1 more in season here — see the full foraging calendar →
Photographs are research-grade observations from iNaturalist, each credited to its photographer. They show a typical specimen, not every variation — never identify from a photo alone. Confirm with a regional field guide or an experienced forager before you eat anything wild.
In the water now · October
What's biting
The sport fish active near Harare, Zimbabwe in October — where they hold, how to know one on the line, and the tactic that usually works. Check your licence and the current limits before you go.
FishYear-roundNile tilapia
Oreochromis niloticus
Deep-bodied and grey-brown with faint bars, and the tell: regular dark vertical stripes right across the tail fin. Breeding males turn reddish, especially on the fins.
Where and how to catch it →Photo: Pål A. Olsvik · CC BY 4.0
FishSep–AprMozambique tilapia (blue kurper)
Oreochromis mossambicus
Deep-bodied and dull silvery-olive with a few dark blotches along the side and no regular stripes on the tail. Breeding males turn black with a white throat, red-edged fins and a pointed, duck-bill snout.
Where and how to catch it →Photo: Wynand Uys · CC BY 4.0
FishYear-roundTigerfish
Hydrocynus vittatus
Silver with dark horizontal stripes along the upper sides, a red-orange tail edged in black, and big fang-like teeth that overlap the jaws even with the mouth shut.
Where and how to catch it →
Photographs are research-grade observations from iNaturalist, each credited to its photographer. Ranges and timing are typical, not guaranteed — 87 species are covered across North America, Europe and Africa.
In the garden now · October
Who else is working the garden
The insects and soil life out near Harare, Zimbabwe in October. Most of them are on your side — learn the few that aren't before you reach for anything.
PollinatorSep–AprHoney bee
Apis mellifera
Golden-brown, banded, furry thorax, and pollen packed onto the hind legs in visible baskets.
What it does in the garden →
PollinatorOct–MarHoverfly
Syrphidae
Wasp-striped but a true fly: two wings not four, huge eyes, and it hovers dead still in mid-air.
What it does in the garden →Photo: Anne Parker · CC BY 4.0
BeneficialOct–AprLady beetle
Coccinellidae
The adult everyone knows; the larva is the useful one — a spiky, alligator-shaped grey-and-orange creature that looks like a pest.
What it does in the garden →
Photographs are research-grade observations from iNaturalist, each credited to its photographer. Ranges and timing are typical, not guaranteed — 87 species are covered across North America, Europe and Africa.
Your ecological region
Southern Savanna & Subtropical Coast
Miombo and mopane woodland, bushveld and big-game savanna from Angola and Zambia to Mozambique and South Africa's warm east coast — summer rain, dry winters.
Regional guide →Your hardiness zone
Zone 11a
Estimated from a 9-year average extreme low of 5°C. What grows, what bites and what to forage across your zone.
Zone guide →Get this guide for Harare every week
Frost warnings, what's biting, what's ripening. One email, Sunday evening.