season

name	season
description	Use when output is bounded by a recurring climate window in the annual cycle — the growing/harvest season set by the frost-free period, the cool- vs warm-season crop split, and heat accumulation (growing degree days) rather than the calendar. The season is the time-axis bottleneck of agriculture: land × season caps how much can be grown; it is regional and probabilistic, never a copied calendar.
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version	2

season — the recurring climate window that bounds growth

A season is a recurring, climate-bounded window in the annual cycle during which a [[crop]] can grow and be harvested — the time-axis [[bottleneck]] of [[agriculture]] (land × season is the binding [[capacity]]). Its outer bound is the [[frost|frost-free period]]: the days between the last spring frost and the first fall frost. Frost dates are probabilistic, not fixed — derived per weather station at a confidence level — so the relevant date is the local one; a copied or state-average calendar misfires.

The season splits crops two ways, and a week-of-year × crop matrix makes the split visible as harvest waves:

• cool-season (greens, roots, brassicas, peas) — tolerate frost, run two cycles (a spring and a fall wave);
• warm-season (tomato, corn, cucumber, melon, pepper) — planted only after last frost, one summer wave.

Heat, not the calendar, drives maturity. Crops accumulate development by [[degreeday|growing degree days]] — GDD = (Tmax + Tmin)/2 − Tbase, with a base near 10 °C for warm-season crops and a cap near 30 °C. A warm spring advances the first [[harvest]] week; a cool one delays it — which is why a fixed-week calendar drifts year to year and is only ever a projection. Season extension ([[tunnel|row cover, high tunnel, greenhouse]]) widens the window weeks at each end, the structural complement to a crop's biological [[hardiness]].

As a cyclical ring keyed to the year, the season is a [[horo]]-style band over the accounting [[period]] / [[time]] axis — the same recurrence law, climate-phased rather than fiscal. It is what [[planting]] staggers against and what every [[crop]]'s harvest window is cut from.

Standards

• NC State Extension — Average First and Last Frost Dates (probabilistic, station-specific); USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (2023)
• Penn State Extension — cool-/warm-season classification & season extension
• Ohio State AGF-101 — growing degree days (86/50 method); phenology references
• Southeastern U.S. Vegetable Crop Handbook (regional planting/harvest windows)

Common mistakes

• Scheduling by calendar week while ignoring weather/GDD — a cold spring pushes the first harvest later than the matrix predicts.
• Treating a regional calendar as universal — frost dates and windows are station-specific.
• Forgetting season extension — row cover/tunnel adds weeks the bare frost-free period understates.

Composes [[agriculture]] · [[crop]] · [[harvest]] · [[planting]] · [[frost]] · [[degreeday]] · [[tunnel]] · [[hardiness]] · [[bottleneck]] · [[capacity]] · [[period]] · [[time]] · [[horo]] · [[schedule]].

Law — [[law]]: the season is the time-axis [[bottleneck]] of [[agriculture]] (land × season caps how much can be grown), set by the probabilistic frost-free window and heat accumulation — regional and never a copied calendar.