Pike County, in Alabama, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
Growers here do well with cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
Pike County lies within the Wiregrass Region (Southeast Alabama) and the Black Belt — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Pike County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Pike County, so your frost dates and drainage aren't the county average. Enter your address and we'll score 1,086 plants against your land's actual soil, sun, and frost.
We read public map data around Pike County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Pike County — the short answer
Pike County, Alabama: USDA zone 8b, about 283 days between hard freezes, across 430K acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 22
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 2
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~283
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 430K acres
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
Every figure names the dataset it came from. Hard-freeze dates are county 28°F normals: light frosts run a few weeks past them, and tender transplants usually wait 2–3 weeks after the last hard freeze.
Hardiness Zone Range
Zone 8b is Pike County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Pike County's 283-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Pike County
Across a year, Pike County accumulates about 5,520 growing degree days above 50°F, about 236 more than the middle Alabama county — ahead of 48 of Alabama’s 67 counties. Degree days are the heat a crop actually gets to work with — more of them is more room to ripen a long-season crop before the freeze closes the window.
Winter banks about 918 hours below 45°F, 330 fewer than the Alabama middle of 1,248. Chill is what tells a fruit tree its dormancy is over, and it is set by climate rather than by anything you can build.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in Pike County
Across Pike County, the ground is predominantly Ultisols, where Cowarts, Luverne, and Troup are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a sandy loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 4.8–5.3, very strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Ultisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
12%
Hydric soils
5%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Pike County
The USDA soil survey maps 70% of Pike County as well drained — but another 29% drains differently: 15% somewhat poorly drained, 9% somewhat excessively drained.
Cowarts is the most extensive named soil at 21% of mapped acres, then Luverne (15%) and Troup (14%).
Which of them your own lot sits on is a parcel question, not a county one. Check your address for the survey at your boundary.
What this means for growing in Pike County
Each reading below is measured for Pike County itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Drainage
MeasuredThe dominant soils across Pike County are well drained, in hydrologic group B — ground that drains quickly.
The upside is soil you can work early in spring and roots that never drown; the cost is that fast-draining ground dries out fast and leaches nutrients away before plants can use them.
Work in compost and mulch to hold moisture and feed, and water more often in short doses than deep and rarely.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Pike County runs about pH 4.8–5.3, on the acidic side.
Blueberries, potatoes, and rhododendrons thrive in it, but most vegetables start locking out nutrients below about pH 6.0 and grow pale and stunted no matter how much you feed them.
A measured lime application raises pH for the crops that need it — but test first, because the right rate depends on your own soil, not the county average.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredPike County runs about 283 days between hard freezes — close to year-round growing.
Frost is rarely the limit here; winter plantings are as real as summer ones, and the harder question is which crops shrug off the summer heat.
Grow cool-season crops through the mild winter, and choose heat-tolerant varieties for the summer beds.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredPike County sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b.
The zone sets which perennials, shrubs, and fruit trees live through an average winter here — a plant rated for a colder zone is a safe bet, one rated warmer needs winter protection or gets treated as an annual.
Match perennials and fruit to the zone before you buy, so nothing you plant is a gamble against the cold.
USDA PHZM 2023
The kind of country Pike County is in
Pike County sits in the Southeastern Plains — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Pike County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Pike County's own USDA zone 8b and its own 283-day season between hard freezes, using the same matching engine that runs a full parcel report. These cleared both. Sun, soil pH and drainage vary lot by lot — those are the parcel questions below. Each card opens that plant's Alabama profile.
Is it too late to plant in Pike County?
Too late for some crops, right on time for others — a growing season is a sequence, not a deadline. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 25; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 22 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 2 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. Here the calendar nearly circles: cool-season crops take the winter shift, and the next window is always close.
Documented around Pike County
- Japanese beetle2 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Pike County
USGS estimates 14,129 lb of Glyphosate on Pike County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of 2,4-d (12,733 lb) and Dicamba (4,814 lb).
Farmland across the whole county, not any one lot. Check your address for the site-by-site record.
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across Pike County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Pike County — 302 documented sites across 7 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed). Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
There's a meaningful federal record across Pike County — worth a look before you plant food, not a reason to hold back from growing. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. A soil test before new food beds is the sensible precaution here, and the map shows exactly which sites sit where, so you can see what's actually near you.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Pike County
Closest first, across Pike County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- TROY STATE UNIVERSITYUnderground Storage Tanks · 2100 ft
- NATIONAL GUARD ARMORYUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.5 mi
- TROY UNIVERSITY MCKINLEY&WALLABrownfields · 0.6 mi
- TROY UNIVERSITY - MCCALL HALLBrownfields · 0.7 mi
- DISCOUNTUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.8 mi
- CENTER FOR MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURING SCIENCESBrownfields · 1.0 mi
- TROY REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTERUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- TROJAN FOOD MARTUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- BP FOOD MARTUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- KEN COX FORDBrownfields · 1.3 mi
- Z-TEC #637Underground Storage Tanks · 1.3 mi
- WAL-MART SUPERCENTER #723Brownfields · 1.4 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Pike County's center, not your beds. Run your own address for what's upwind of you specifically.
Environmental Intelligence
The counts behind that headline — every source type on the record near Pike County.
Total Sites
302
across Pike County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed)
Severity Distribution
across Pike County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Pike County, two things run higher than the national average across Pike County — CAFO (63 sites) and PFAS (3 sites). Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
CAFO: CAFOs pose a different contamination profile than chemical sources.
PFAS: PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are called "forever chemicals" because they do not biodegrade.
Wash all produce consumed raw thoroughly, especially leafy greens grown near CAFOs.
Test irrigation water source — this is the primary pathway for PFAS to reach garden crops.
Check your specific parcel in Pike County
Get exact proximity distances to contamination sources for your specific parcel — plus soil, sun, drainage, and 1,086 plant recommendations.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Pike County average
Your land is one point inside Pike County
Everything above resolves to Pike County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 430K acres. Your parcel is one point inside that footprint. Slope, tree cover, a low spot that pools cold air, and what is in the soil are all resolved at the address, and none of them are visible at county scale. That is the honest boundary of this page, and the reason the next step is a reading of your own ground rather than a better county average.
Your Lot vs the Pike County Average
Pike County Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Pike County
- ●One soil character for all of Pike County
- ●Frost dates read at Pike County's scale: Feb 22 to Dec 2
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Pike County's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Pike County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Pike County, Alabama — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Pike County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Pike County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Pike County average
How we know this about Pike County
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at county grain; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at this county’s own record where one resolves, and the labelled statewide window where none does; soils from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, area-weighted across the county’s own map units; boundaries and acreage from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination and pesticide records from the federal sources named in their beats above. Where Pike County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Pike County
When does frost risk typically end in Pike County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Pike County typically lands around Feb 22, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — earlier than the light-frost dates most charts quote. That marks the hard freeze, not the last light frost — lighter frosts keep biting past it, which is why tender transplants here wait until about Mar 15.
How long is the growing season in Pike County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Pike County sees about 283 frost-free days — roughly Feb 22 through Dec 2, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 15 to Nov 18, about 248 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Pike County?
The federal record around Pike County is a meaningful one — 302 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (169), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.4 miles out — so a soil test before new food beds is a sensible precaution here, not a reason to hold back from growing. Remember that proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what sits where.
Everything above is measured at Pike County's scale — its 8b band and its 283-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Pike County's numbers: we read soil, sun, drainage and frost at your exact address. Try it for 14 days — no card required.
Will It Grow Here?
Zone fit is the first question — each answer below reads Alabama's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Pike County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Pike County's own scale — its own ~283-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 302 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Pike County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Pike County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~283-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Pike CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 302 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.4 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Pike County's boundary and the 430,122 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~283-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Pike County sitting wholly inside the Southeastern PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Pike County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Pike County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Alabama grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Alabama
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Pike County — the ~283 days above is one reading at its centre; the 12 towns below each carry their owntowns in this county →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Pike County's 430,122 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 302 documented sites actually reaches your soil — that needs your address, the wind, and the groundwater directionhow we read the record →
- Where cold air settles, which slopes face the sun, and which way the wind runs on your own ground — none of it survives being averaged over Pike Countyread your own land →