Ashley County, in Arkansas, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
Reliable performers under these conditions include cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens; what your own ground favors still comes down to its soil, sun, and drainage.
Ashley County lies within the West Gulf Coastal Plain (South Arkansas) — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Ashley County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Ashley 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 Ashley County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Ashley County — the short answer
Ashley County, Arkansas: USDA zone 8b, about 268 days between hard freezes, across 592K acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 23
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~268
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 592K 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 Ashley County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Ashley County's 268-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Ashley County
Across a year, Ashley County accumulates about 5,401 growing degree days above 50°F, about 595 more than the middle Arkansas county — ahead of 71 of Arkansas’s 75 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 1,327 hours below 45°F, 453 fewer than the Arkansas middle of 1,780. 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 Ashley County
Across Ashley County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Calloway, Grenada, and Guyton are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally somewhat poorly drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.3–5.6, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C/D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Somewhat poorly drained
Prime farmland
56%
Hydric soils
29%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Ashley County
The USDA soil survey maps 40% of Ashley County as somewhat poorly drained — but another 57% drains differently: 28% poorly drained, 18% moderately well drained.
Calloway is the most extensive named soil at 17% of mapped acres, then Grenada (12%) and Guyton (10%).
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 Ashley County
Each reading below is measured for Ashley 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 Ashley County are somewhat poorly drained, in hydrologic group C/D — ground that sheds water slowly.
Beds can stay saturated for days after heavy rain, and the roots of most vegetables, berries, and fruit trees suffocate or rot in soil that never drains.
Raised beds or mounded rows lift roots above the wet zone; choose water-tolerant crops for the lowest spots.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Ashley County runs about pH 5.3–5.6, 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
MeasuredAshley County runs about 268 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
MeasuredAshley 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 Ashley County is in
Ashley County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — South Central Plains (74%) and Mississippi Alluvial Plain (26%). Which one your land falls in changes what grows wild there and how the ground behaves, and a county-wide answer cannot tell you which.
What Grows in Ashley County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Ashley County's own USDA zone 8b and its own 268-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 Arkansas profile.
Is it too late to plant in Ashley County?
For most of the year, no — what changes is which crops still fit the days remaining. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 31; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 28 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 23 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. In a climate this gentle, “too late” hardly applies — the question becomes which crops prefer the cooler months ahead.
Documented around Ashley County
- monarch butterfly12 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Ashley County
USGS estimates 156,628 lb of Glyphosate on Ashley County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (114,264 lb) and Metolachlor-s (75,680 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 Ashley County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Ashley County — 204 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 8 Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
There's a meaningful federal record across Ashley 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 Ashley County
Closest first, across Ashley County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- TEXACO FOOD MARTUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.2 mi
- CRACKERBOX #6Underground Storage Tanks · 2.3 mi
- GAS MART #4Underground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- HAMBURG SCHOOL BUS SHOPUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
- P E BARNES CO INCToxics Release Inventory · 2.7 mi
- J & A ONE STOPUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- PE BARNES LUMBER CO OF HAMBURGUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- HANDI KORNER #1Underground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- PIONEER OIL COMPANY #121Underground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- CARLE CORNERUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- ASHLEY GAS & TACKLEUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- DP TOBACCOUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.0 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Ashley 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 Ashley County.
Total Sites
204
across Ashley County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
8 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
across Ashley County
Severity Distribution
across Ashley County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Ashley County, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 66 sites across Ashley County. Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Ashley 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 Ashley County average
Your land is one point inside Ashley County
Everything above resolves to Ashley County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 592K 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 Ashley County Average
Ashley County Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Ashley County
- ●One soil character for all of Ashley County
- ●Frost dates read at Ashley County's scale: Feb 28 to Nov 23
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Ashley County's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Ashley County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Ashley County, Arkansas — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Ashley County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Ashley County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Ashley County average
How we know this about Ashley 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 Ashley County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Ashley County
When does frost risk typically end in Ashley County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Ashley County typically lands around Feb 28, 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 21.
How long is the growing season in Ashley County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Ashley County sees about 268 frost-free days — roughly Feb 28 through Nov 23, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 21 to Nov 9, about 233 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Ashley County?
The federal record around Ashley County is a meaningful one — 204 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (114), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 2.2 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 Ashley County's scale — its 8b band and its 268-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Ashley 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 Arkansas's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Ashley County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Ashley County's own scale — its own ~268-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 204 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Ashley County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Ashley County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~268-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Ashley CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 204 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 2.2 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Ashley County's boundary and the 592,314 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~268-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Ashley County spans, South Central Plains the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Ashley County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Ashley County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Arkansas grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Arkansas
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Ashley County — the ~268 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 Ashley County's 592,314 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 204 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 Ashley Countyread your own land →