Pick Your Own in North Dakota
2 of the six crops on this list clear the census threshold in North Dakota, and the largest is pumpkins at 52 acres over 48 farms in the 2022 Census of Agriculture. The census counted too little strawberries, blueberries, peaches and Christmas trees to build a window from, and each is named with its numbers below. Frost typically clears North Dakota around May 18, which is the clock everything except the pumpkin patch and the Christmas tree lot runs on. Every window below is a typical range rather than a report.
Apples and pumpkins are all inside their typical North Dakota windows right now, which is a statement about the calendar and not about any farmWhat falls inside its window in North Dakota today
Northern New England, Northern Rockies and Alaska band, 2022 census coverageApples
September 5 to October 25
Inside its typical window today
Harvest bandPumpkins
September 10 to October 31
Inside its typical window today
Calendar set“Inside its typical window” is arithmetic on a calendar. Whether the fruit has ripened and whether a farm near you is picking on a given day is published by the farm.
North Dakota’s picking year
North Dakota fills 2 of the six crops on this list: apples and pumpkins. The census could not find enough of the rest to build a window from, and the real numbers are further down this page. Frost typically clears the state around May 18 and the first fall freeze typically arrives around September 22, giving about 125 frost free days. That is the clock the fruit runs on.
Every North Dakota window, with the caveat attached
The block below carries every North Dakota window, whose window each one is, what the census counted and where to look for a farm, with the weather caveat alongside.
Crops below the census threshold
- Strawberries, no season. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 8 farms, with the acreage withheld to avoid identifying an individual operation in North Dakota, under the line this site uses for a crop somebody could plausibly drive to, so there is no window for it here.
- Blueberries, no season. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 6 farms, with the acreage withheld to avoid identifying an individual operation in North Dakota, under the line this site uses for a crop somebody could plausibly drive to, so there is no window for it here.
- Peaches, no season. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 2 acres over 3 farms in North Dakota, under the line this site uses for a crop somebody could plausibly drive to, so there is no window for it here.
- Christmas trees, no season. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 6 farms, with the acreage withheld to avoid identifying an individual operation in North Dakota, under the line this site uses for a crop somebody could plausibly drive to, so there is no window for it here.
North Dakota is in the Northern New England, Northern Rockies and Alaska band
The shortest and latest calendar. Frost can hold into the third week of May, strawberries wait for late June, and the apple season is over before Halloween in most years.
North Dakota's median last spring frost is May 18 and its median first fall freeze is September 22, about 125 frost free days, which places it in this band without argument. USDA hardiness zones here run 3a to 4b.
Sharing the band with North Dakota: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Alaska. A band is wide by design. Within one, two states a few hundred miles apart can genuinely differ by a fortnight, and a single state with real elevation in it differs by more than that inside its own borders.
The frost dates above are medians for representative stations in the state’s populated core, which means half of all years are later than the date shown. A valley floor frosts earlier than the hillside above it and a lakeshore later than the town ten miles inland, so the number places a state against other states rather than a farm against its own calendar. Frost dates by state and city carries the detail, including the early and late brackets.
Summarised from NOAA 1991 to 2020 climate normals, as carried by this site's frost vertical in our own words.
The two crops that ignore all of this are worth saying again. North Dakota's pumpkin patches close on October 31 like everyone else's, because a patch is a Halloween business rather than a harvest. Those dates are the only ones on this site that do not move with the weather at all.
USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, Appendix A, Disclosure Review“NASS is obligated to withhold, under Title 7, U.S. Code, any total that would reveal an individual’s information or allow it to be closely estimated by the public.”
USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, Appendix A, Disclosure Review“Farm counts are not considered sensitive and are not subject to disclosure controls.”
That is why a crop can be missing from this page with a real number behind it rather than a blank. A withheld cell is the census saying the crop exists and is small enough that naming the acreage would identify the farm growing it. Where that happens here, the page shows the farm count and notes that the acreage was withheld.
North Dakota pick your own FAQ
The rest of the North Dakota food calendar
Picking windows in nearby states
Acreage and farm counts are USDA NASS’s, from the 2022 Census of Agriculture, a US Government work in the public domain, pulled from the Quick Stats bulk census file on 2026-09-04. Frost medians are NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals for representative stations. Florida’s harvest windows are the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ own; every other window on this site is ours, placed by hand into a harvest band and printed next to the state’s frost date so it can be checked. Picking windows in every state