Editorial Standards

Who writes these guides

Every guide on Real Food Grower is authored by the Real Food Grower editorial research desk — an organizational byline, not a person. We do not publish under fabricated names, composite personas, or bylines that don't trace to a real accountable entity. This is a deliberate choice: it aligns with Google's 2024 authenticity policies for E-E-A-T signals, and it aligns with our own view that the methodology on this site is the authority, not any invented personal expertise.

When we cite a specific human source in a guide, it is a real person or institution (e.g., a WSU extension agronomist writing in a specific extension bulletin, a NOAA climatologist behind a specific dataset). We link to their work by URL so the citation is auditable.

The dataset that powers every guide

Real Food Grower operates on a proprietary combined dataset:

• 30,074 US and Canadian cities with NOAA-derived frost dates, growing-season length, Köppen climate class, USDA hardiness zone, rainfall normals, deer pressure, and water-restriction context.
• 924 cultivar profiles covering container-compatible edibles and ornamentals with 86 attribute columns per plant.
• 99 growing methods (fabric pot, cedar planter, self-watering, Kratky hydroponics, straw bale, vertical tower, and 93 others).
• 5,504 companion-planting edges mapped between 703 plants.
• 167 pet-toxicity records with per-plant ASPCA URLs.
• 73 fruit-cultivar chill-hour requirements from UC Davis / extension services.
• 44,199 ZIP → nearest-city mappings from the 2024 Census ZCTA Gazetteer.

Every claim on the site — planting window, watering rhythm, cultivar recommendation, difficulty rating — is either (a) drawn directly from a cited primary source or (b) computed analytically from the dataset above using published methodology.

Primary source ecosystem

• NOAA NCEI — National Centers for Environmental Information. Frost dates, temperature normals, and growing-degree-day baselines from the 1991–2020 station normals. Each city is mapped to its nearest reporting station.
• USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (2023) — Official zone map for minimum winter temperatures. We use the 2023 revision, not the 2012 version many sites still reference.
• WSU Extension & OSU Extension — Home fruit and vegetable handbooks, cultivar trial results, IPM guides.
• UC Davis — Cultivar releases and chill-hour data for temperate fruit.
• Köppen-Geiger climate classification — Beck et al. 2018 high-resolution reclassification, used to route climate-specific advice.
• ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants Database — Cat, dog, and horse toxicity flags with per-plant ASPCA URLs.
• EWG Dirty Dozen & Clean Fifteen — Annual pesticide residue analysis from USDA and FDA sampling; powers the Pesticide Load Index (PLI) scoring on plant guides.
• USDA AMS & NASS — Variety-trial data and seed availability behind our variety recommendations.
• US Census Bureau ZCTA Gazetteer (2024) — Official ZIP-to-location mapping for the location-based tools.

Climate coverage

Every Köppen-Geiger climate class present in the US and Canada is represented in our dataset:

How a guide gets written

1. Climate lock. Before a word of prose exists, the target plant × city is keyed to the nearest NOAA station, Köppen zone, USDA hardiness zone, and city-level water/deer/frost data. Every recommendation that follows is bound to those numbers.
2. Difficulty score computed. Our EASY / MODERATE / HARD / VERY HARD score is computed deterministically from the plant's tolerance range vs. the city's climate profile. It is not editorial judgment.
3. RFG scoring metrics computed. The RFG Score, Container Productivity Score, Water Efficiency Score, Space Efficiency Score, Beginner Success Rating, Grow vs Buy Payback Index (GBPI), and Pesticide Load Index (PLI) are all computed from the same underlying dataset every reader can audit.
4. Analytical synthesis. The prose sections are drafted as synthesis of cited primary sources, with in-line source links where specific claims (frost dates, cultivar performance, chill hours, pesticide residue counts) are being made.
5. Cross-reference pass. Every quantitative claim is checked against at least one primary source. Where sources disagree, we cite the disagreement rather than picking silently.
6. Annual re-review. Every plant × city guide is re-checked against the latest NOAA normals release annually. Corrections are dated and visible.

Corrections policy

If we get something wrong, we want to hear about it. Email [email protected] with the URL and the specific problem. Substantive corrections (a wrong number, a bad cultivar recommendation, a misattributed source) are visible at the top of any page that's been updated, with the date of correction and what changed. We do not silently edit past errors.

What we don't do

• We don't fabricate bylines. Every article carries the organizational Real Food Grower byline. No composite personas, no stock-photo headshots, no invented years of experience.
• We don't publish generic Zone-7 advice. If a page can't be climate-locked to your city with real data, we don't publish the page.
• We don't hide affiliate relationships. Where we recommend a specific product with an affiliate link, it's disclosed at the point of link.
• We don't chase page count. We publish where the dataset supports a genuine climate-specific answer. When we've been in "hold and quality-check" mode, we say so publicly (see the site status log).

Get in touch

Editorial questions, corrections, methodology discussion, licensing, press: [email protected]. Or see the full contact page for other categories.