Last Frost Date Natashquan — May 28

The average last spring frost at Natashquan is May 28, measured at the station ECCC calls NATASHQUAN, Climate ID 7045398, in the 1991–2020 climate normals. The average first fall frost is September 20, and the published frost-free period is 114 days. One qualification travels with the figure: it rests on 16 years of record between 1991 and 2015 with 4 missing years, not a full 30-year normal, and ECCC rates it completeness code D. It is a real, multi-year measurement and a weaker one than a full normal, and this page says so wherever the number appears.

Because the nearest one we cover is Quebec City, 787 km away — roughly the distance from Montreal to Halifax. The whole Côte-Nord lies between them and the climate changes the entire way: Quebec City publishes 134 frost-free days against Natashquan's 114, twenty days more. Borrowing that calendar grants three weeks of season that does not exist in Minganie. The problem is not that data is missing; it is that the nearest station is a long way off, which is precisely why Natashquan deserves its own page rather than a row in a regional table.

Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, 311 km away across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Its season is closer than any mainland Quebec city's: 122 frost-free days against 114, a difference of 8 days. Both places sit in a Gulf maritime climate, which Natashquan does not share with interior Quebec. It illustrates a useful rule — the right reference is not the nearest on a road map, it is the one under the same climate. Natashquan has its own station in any case, which makes the question academic.

We do not publish one, because we have not verified it. Natural Resources Canada is the only authority for a Canadian hardiness zone, and we quote NRCan or we quote nobody; computing a zone from our own data would be original research a reader could mistake for an official figure. Check directly at planthardiness.gc.ca, which accepts a municipality name or coordinates. A zone and a frost date answer different questions in any case: a zone is about surviving winter, a frost date is about when to plant.

A great deal, provided the varieties are early. 114 days is comfortably enough for the cool-season crops that make up most of a northern vegetable garden: potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, kale, broccoli, peas, spinach, lettuce, onions. Tomatoes succeed with short-maturity varieties started indoors and set out after May 28. What struggles is anything counting degree-days rather than days — melons, eggplant, late peppers, long-season corn. A tunnel or cold greenhouse changes the picture, and Gulf wind often matters more than cold.

Early June. May 28 is the date frost has usually finished, not a safe planting date: roughly half of years see a later one, and a tomato lost in mid-June cannot be replaced inside a 114-day season. Start indoors 6 to 8 weeks ahead, harden off gradually, and aim for the first week of June. With a September 20 first frost the ripening window is short — favour 60 to 70 day varieties over large late-season ones.

It shifts the season more than it lengthens it. The Gulf of St. Lawrence delays spring — cold water is slow to warm, which is why the last frost lands on May 28, late even for the latitude — and delays autumn too, but by less. The net is 114 days, close to Sherbrooke's 112, a city some 900 km to the southwest and thoroughly continental. That is the signature of a northern maritime climate: neither the extremes of the interior nor the mildness a coastline might promise.

The station ECCC publishes as NATASHQUAN, Climate ID 7045398, at 50°11'N 61°48'W. Like most ECCC normals it is a composite: several successive stations threaded together because no single one ran for the whole reference period, including NATASHQUAN AIRPORT and NATASHQUAN A. All of them sit at Natashquan itself. Any figure on this page can be re-checked at climate.weather.gc.ca using that Climate ID.